I find it curious that after 17 years in exile Asil Nadir, the former chief executive of collapsed conglomerate Polly Peck International (PPI), returned to the UK in 2010 to face charges of theft.This week he was found guilty of...

The “Shareholder Spring” was refuelled on Tuesday with the news that bosses of the UK’s top companies received on average inflation-busting pay rises of 10 percent last year.Ordinarily, the news wouldn’t be that surprising, albeit unpalatable for many. But given...

Today, Aviva became the latest in a growing list of European companies to face a shareholder backlash over escalating executive pay, when more than half of its investors voted down pay plans at the company’s annual general meeting.On Monday Aviva...

Shareholder activism, it seems, isn’t going away any time soon. And of course it’s refreshing to see. The Association of British Insurers, which represents almost a fifth of UK shareholders, this week raised concerns about Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond’s...

Chancellor George Osborne on Wednesday was clearly determined to overturn the recent anti-business sentiment that prime minister David Cameron and business secretary Vince Cable has been recently fostering with their repeated attacks on executive pay.The country’s top finance chiefs have...

The news this morning of the European Union's plans to impose mandatory quotas to ensure more places for women on boards was a bit of a shock. It’s not that policymakers in Europe hadn’t said they might legislate on the...

Much has been said about the benefits of greater diversity in British boardrooms, but I’ve heard few concrete examples as to how diversity helps companies on an operational level. David Tyler, chairman of Sainsbury’s, however put an end to my...

This week Lloyds Banking Group became one of the first leading UK companies to apply the increasingly popular tool - and a central part of government plans to tackle excessive pay - the clawback.Lloyds’ announced that outgoing CFO Tim Tookey,...

Who’d have thought a Conservative-led government would stir up such anti-business sentiment?Last week business secretary Vince Cable - or as he might be known in corporate circle anti-business secretary - published a package of far-reaching proposals to shake up the...

This time last year as the world’s elite of politics, business and finance wended their way up into the Swiss mountains to the hill-top village of Davos, CFOWorld ran an article about what chief financial officers were expecting to find...