Leading firms in the institutional investor community have joined forces with Tomorrow’s Company to launch a working party which aims to improve the quality of engagement by institutional investors with UK companies. The practitioner-led group aims to identify engagement styles and practices that seem to be most effective and to share that intelligence with the aim of making engagement more rewarding for investors and companies alike. The group also intends to make a significant contribution to the 2012 revision of the Stewardship Code which the Financial Reporting Council is proposing will take effect from 1st October 2012. The group includes some of the world’s largest and most active investors – Aviva Investors, BlackRock, Governance for Owners, Railpen Investments, Ram Trust and USS.

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"All of us whose money is going into the system need to be given the opportunity to exercise some simple choices about stewardship. A consumer who walks down the supermarket aisle can choose to buy Fair Trade coffee, and they know what that means. The same should happen when we look at products offered us by fund managers: we should be able to tell the stewardship content," – Mark Goyder, Founder Director of Tomorrow’s CompanyAn article published in The Guardian newspaper (on 21/6/11) - featuring contributions and comment from Mark Goyder - sets out the expectation that Business Secretary Vince Cable will use his speech to the Association of British Insurers on Wednesday (22/6/11) to renew his calls for UK plc to take a more long term view of its activities.

Mark Goyder is the Founder Director Tomorrow’s Company, the business-led think and do tank, and co-author of the Family Business Stewardship report. In this article, first printed in the Raconteur supplement of The Times and in association with the Institute for Family Business, Mark discusses the role of stewardship as well as setting out the four major principles that underpin family business stewardship.

In 2008 Tomorrows Company published “Tomorrow’s Owners – stewardship of Tomorrow’s Company”. This was a review of the principles of good ownership from private equity and family business to institutional investment in listed companies. The report concluded that shareholders had four roles – being a member, a provider of finance, a trader of shares and a steward, but that in listed companies it was this fourth role that was being neglected. The publication of this report coincided with the failure of the banks in October 2008. Sir David Walker picked up the theme of stewardship in his 2009 report for the UK government on the governance of banks and other financial institutions. Here we set out Tomorrow’s Company’s definition of stewardship and the four principles that make up effective stewardship.