The UK has the world’s first code for investor stewardship. Improving the quality and quantity of investor stewardship will help make the code a working reality. 20/20 vision is needed to clarify what is meant by investor stewardship and to find ways to help investors and companies put this into practice building on many years of progress in UK corporate governance. Introducing value-adding stewardship programmes takes time but we anticipate full and effective implementation will have been achieved by 2020. Our ideas are aimed at the UK but we believe that they will be of value in other markets. We believe that a critical mass of investor stewards is vital. We also recognise that not every shareholder can or needs to be a good steward. There is nothing wrong in NOT signing up to the Stewardship Code when an institutional investor has products that are not suitable, or is too small, or is a non-believer in the benefits of stewardship. The findings in this report represent both our...

On 15 November 2011 Tomorrow's Company launched the first report in a programme on employee voice being undertaken in partnership with the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA). The report ‘Rethinking voice – for sustainable business success’ describes how employee voice is critical for the future of UK plc. Employee voice involves a two-way communication and an honest and trusting relationship between the organisation and its staff. Other project partners include BAE Systems, British Gas, HSBC, IAC Group, Thomson and Unipart, who enrich the report with their own experiences and challenges of voice.  Finally it sets out a framework that pulls together the factors that we think impact on the quality and effectiveness of employee voice in organisations.

Tomorrow’s Corporate Reporting: A critical system at risk focuses on the systems architecture and the behaviours and values of its stakeholders. Not on the content of the ‘ideal corporate report’. By corporate reporting we mean all the mechanisms by which companies communicate their performance and activity to their stakeholders, with a particular emphasis on the flow of information into the investment community.The study looked at:What aspects of the system are preventing or supporting the effective development of corporate reporting? And what changes are needed to make the system fit for purpose for the future? During the research, 145 individuals provided evidence, were interviewed or engaged through roundtable discussions, representing 118 organisations from 22 countries across five continents. The report explains the components of the current system and highlights that very few, if any, stakeholders see it as a system – rather they see particular pieces of the jigsaw. The...

Integrating strategies for corporate responsibility and evaluating their impact, both sociallyand environmentally, is becoming increasingly critical to business. Companies are seekingways to successfully put their strategies on sustainability into practice - strengthening theconnection between corporate responsibility and global competitiveness. This paper summarises the key discussion points from a high level roundtable discussionorganised by CIMA and Tomorrow’s Company, where senior business decision makers met with experts in sustainability. Anant Nadkarni, Vice President, Group Corporate Sustainability, Tata Council for Community Initiatives (TCCI) presented the Tata Index to the group.  This has been captured on video and can be found here.

The Black-Scholes model provides an important foundation for mathematicalmodels used for pricing options. Myron Scholes won a Nobel prize for this and related work. It has always been recognised that blindly following models exposes the user to unexpectedrisks since they are often at odds with reality. For some, such modelssymbolise the absurdity of much of modern financial structuring. Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan theoryrefers to a large impact event beyond the realm of normal expectations, andhas come to represent an event, like the credit crunch, that conventional wisdom said could not happen.A White Swan is different.