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After the UK published the UK Stewardship Code in 2010, several other jurisdictions followed suit and published their own versions of stewardship codes. The focus on institutional investor stewardship has become a global trend in recent years. In 2016, Taiwan joined the trend by launching the "Stewardship Principles for Institutional Investors" (Taiwan Stewardship Code). As the Taiwan Stewardship Code has been based on the UK Stewardship, this Article first conducts a comparative analysis between the Taiwan and UK Stewardship Codes. To shed more light on institutional investor stewardship in Taiwan, this Article reviews the 2020 stewardship reports of all 153 signatories of the Taiwan Stewardship Code, which were released exactly five years after the launch of the Taiwan Stewardship Code . Examining the signatories' stewardship activities in several aspects, this Article found that the signatories' stewardship is far from satisfying. Not only does the level of stewardship fall short of the Taiwan Stewardship Code's expectations, but the signatories also have not been following the requirements of the Taiwan Stewardship Code. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the Taiwan Stewardship Code has been ineffective in promoting stewardship among Taiwan institutional investors. To achieve that end, the Taiwan Stewardship Code will need to be revised significantly. This Article proposes and analyzes several potential improvements to the Taiwan Stewardship Code so that it can ultimately strengthen Taiwan's corporate governance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the European Union (EU) and Great Britain's reforms in sustainable finance and the potential of such regulatory initiatives to re-orient investment management practices. Topics discussed include institutional shareholder engagement, unreconciled and contesting narratives that underlie the expectations of shareholder engagement by institutions, and the Stewardship Code 2020 in Great Britain.

In this paper we argue that new models of artists' royalties and performers' equity can form the basis of social impact funds in the arts. Following the principle that those who contribute value should own part of it, we model social impact funds using a "value creation" lens, starting with royalties, profit shares, and other rights granted to visual artists, performers, and playwrights (referred to collectively as "artists"). We draw on data from DACS, the United Kingdom manager of the Artist Resale Right (ARR) and copyright licensing, as well as Arts Council England. We build on case studies of the Artist Pension Trust and Olav Velthuis' suggestion of applying football (soccer) transfer fees to the arts, in order to argue for an artist-centric view of sustainable investing in the culture sector. This proposal complements cultural impact investing funds started by LISC and Upstart Co-Lab while creating more diversifiable, flexible, and artist-centric systems to address problems of risk and diversification of early-stage investment in creative work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from investor engagement into corporate culture at UK listed banks. In 2014 and 2015 interviews with bank practitioners revealed the following seven elements as fundamental to improving bank culture; simplification of the business, corporate purpose, organisational culture, staff in the business, customer experience, board balance, and focus and engagement by the Chair of the board. The study designed baselines to capture where banks are in absolute and relative terms in relation to the seven elements. Culture performance over the 24 months of the study was examined. Banks that made most improvement during the investigation activated culture predominantly within the business by empowering the department most apt to handle it. Centring the culture programme within the business was associated with a focus on the middle and the grassroots level of the organisation. Banks that made least improvement activated culture principally ‘from the top’. Centring the culture programme at the top was associated with a focus on control, conformance, and structure. The finding of relatively greater performance when culture programmes were activated within the business contrasts sharply with recommendations from regulators and conventional wisdom that the establishment of corporate culture is necessarily a top-down exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed that immigrants in countries such as the United Kingdom will report lower levels of trust in the police. Immigrant communities are thought 'difficult to police', and minority groups frequently experience problematic relationships with police. Yet, there has been little empirical investigation of this issue in the United Kingdom. In this paper, data from the Crime Survey of England and Wales are used to explore the relationship between immigration and trust in the police. Results suggest that trust is higher among immigrants than among the UK-born population, although there is important variation by time since arrival and experience of policing. Trust in the police is also higher in neighbourhoods that have more immigrants. The paper concludes with some reflection on the nature of trust in the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a report of project management (PM) for Great Britain. Topics discussed include reports from railway for Great Britain Crossrail Ltd. and the Association for Project Management (APM), award announcement from APM for project management professionals, the need for portfolio management and benchmarking revealed in the reports of PM salary survey, and completion of tunneling in an infrastructure project by Crossrail.

Contract is crucial for governing the relationships between asset owners and the many types of agents that underpin the production of financial services. We distinguish between discrete contracts for financial services and investment management contracts that are better described as relational in the sense that they are open ended and subject to renegotiation between the parties. Emphasis is placed upon the significance of risk and uncertainty in financial markets and the ways in which the parties to contracts adapt to these conditions. This provides the backdrop for understanding three different types of contractual arrangements apparent in the investment management industry, bringing to the fore the significance of the choice of jurisdiction when writing contracts for investment services. We explain how and why the UK is a favoured destination for European institutions just as offshore jurisdictions, such as the Cayman Islands, may be the favoured 'home' jurisdictions for certain types of UK and global investment managers. At the heart of the relationship between asset owners and asset managers is the power of these parties when choosing the type of contract and the jurisdiction which is the favoured location for formalising these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The final report of the Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision-Making was published in July 2012. It offers a view on the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis and what might be done to reform the structure and performance of the British investment management industry. This article explains the significance of the Kay Review, its sponsor, and the nature and scope of its recommendations. In the main, I am enthusiastic about its agenda, even if I am surprised by some of the report's assumptions and suppositions. At one level, the report declares open season on the investment management industry; at another level, it is only half the story. Where the Kay Review might have looked closely at both sides of the market, it chose to focus on asset managers rather than asset holders, yet the latter group also bears some responsibility for short-termism. The key recommendations, aimed at applying a stronger conception of fiduciary duty to investment managers, will have little impact if asset holders are not effective clients of the global financial services industry. The British government's response to the final report of the Kay Review was lukewarm, deferring on its recommendations on fiduciary duty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, 95 percent of firms employ fewer than five people, making them the backbone of the national economy. The British government's new solutions for Business portfolio is calling on the Design Council and its Designing Demand program to help small businesses reinvent themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the incentives in fund management due to the adoption of specific performance measures. A mean-variance measure such as Jensen's alpha incentivizes fund managers to load negative coskewness risk. This risk is shown to be priced in the UK stock market during the period January 1991- December 2005, bearing a premium of 2.09% p.a. Hence, a new performance measure, the intercept of the Harvey-Siddique two-factor asset pricing model is proposed to be more appropriate for prudent investors. Using this model, the performance of UK equity unit trusts is examined for the same period. Though most of the managers significantly underperformed their benchmark, they correctly responded to their incentives, loading negative coskewness and reaping part of the corresponding premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study constructs sixteen mean-variance optimal portfolios of private real estate using returns from the United States and the United Kingdom. First, the analysis uses total returns by property type (retail, office, and industrial). Second, the returns are separated into their two components: returns from income and returns from appreciation. Third, optimal portfolios are constructed by type of return and again by property type. Finally, all returns are considered together. Several non-obvious and non-trivial results emerge. For example, the high risk portfolios using total returns are 100% UK for all three property types and when the three property types are combined, offices, generally regarded as the most popular type of institutional real estate investment, never enter the optimal portfolio for either the US. or the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the financial performance of a UK unit trust that was initially ''conventional'' and later adopted socially responsible investment (SRI) principles (ethical investment principles). Comparison is made with three similar conventional funds whose investment objectives remained unchanged. Analysis techniques employed in previous studies find similar results: mean risk-adjusted performance is unchanged by the switch to SRI, with no evidence of over-or under-performance relative to the benchmark market index by any of the four funds. More interestingly, changes in variability of returns over time are also modelled using generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models, not previously applied to SRI funds so far as is known. Results show a temporary increase in variability of returns, followed by a return to previous levels after around 4 years. Evidence shows the increased variability to be associated with the adoption of SRI rather than with a change in fund management. Possible explanations for the subsequent reduction in variability include the spread of corporate social responsibility activities by firms and learning by fund managers. In addition to reporting on a previously unobserved phenomenon, this paper raises questions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the regional development due to general election in Great Britain. Topics discussed include the employment growth in the country, the social aspects of economic development, and the project management. Also mentioned are the financial support for job creation, the investments management, and the importance of innovations in business.

The purpose of this article is to explain statistically the substantial inter-industry variance that is observed in the prevalence of multinational corporations. The identification of the determinants of foreign investment with those of multiplant development in the domestic market could be tested in two ways. One might locate the fundamental structural traits of an industry that explain the incidence of multiplant development; or one might take the extent of intra-national multiplant development itself as a signal of their presence. The construction of the dependent variable for the Great Britain raises two problems not encountered in the Canadian data. First, the shares of foreign firms are calculated not on the basis of all sales by firms of products classified to an industry, but only from sales of principal products classified to that industry. These principal products comprise a variable fraction of the industry's total sales. The second problem with the dependent variable arises from the Great Britain's rules against disclosing data on individual firms. For some industries it can only be determined whether the share held by foreign firms is greater or less than 10%.

• The paper explores the consequences of sub-optimal cost-safety trade-offs. • An ethnographic approach is used to complement prior quantitative cost-safety studies. • We demonstrate how low-winning tender bids can elevate safety risks. • The construction industry is currently structured for unsafety. • There is a critical need to rethink the industry's competitive bidding practices. Construction accidents can have major social, financial, reputational and legal implications. Hence, it is to be expected that safety is often presented as a key priority for construction organisations. However, existing evidence suggests that within the construction industry, safety often loses the battle when a trade-off is required with project cost. Improved understanding of the manifestations of the cost and safety interaction are needed. A three-year longitudinal study afforded the opportunity to investigate the safety implications of sub-economic bids on a large infrastructure project in the UK. While low-bidding to win tenders is not new, this paper presents empirical evidence of the consequential safety risk implications of such bidding at the project delivery stage. Faced with a perverse form of the tender 'Winner's Curse' where the successful bid is frequently the lowest, cost-saving strategies are often implemented to recoup lost pricing margins. Our investigation revealed several instances of consequentially elevated safety risks, through cheaper and poor-quality equipment, machinery and temporary structures. In addition, lower-paid migrant workers – who already experience a statistically greater safety risk than local workers – were employed on the project without appropriate investment in a safety management approach suitable for a multinational workforce. The study both contributes to the call to critically rethink the construction industry's competitive bidding practices, and highlights an industry structure that creates the conditions for high safety risks and accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]