PIRC is the UKs leading independent research and advisory consultancy providing services to institutional investors on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. Since 1986, it has been the pioneer and champion of good corporate governance within the UK.
Authoritative resource
PIRC has a wide spectrum of clients ranging from pension funds, faith-based investors and unions to banks and asset managers. Its Corporate Governance Service is an authoritative and vital resource for active investors, whilst its widely-read Shareholder Voting Guidelines provide a market-wide benchmark for investors and forms part of the movement for corporate governance reform and long-term wealth creation strategies for responsible investors.
PIRC's success
As the UK's market leader in corporate governance, we strive to empower our clients to develop the confidence and competence required to successfully manage their assets and their obligations as responsible investors. Our focus on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility provides clients with tools to enable them to achieve accountability, transparency and responsibility within their portfolio investments. We seek to understand and critically interrogate such issues at each company in which our clients invest. In this way we believe that our services and consulting advice enable our clients to add value to their understanding of how companies function, more effectively monitor risks that arise from governance and CSR failure, and to increase their, and their investee companies', wealth creating potential.
PIRC's long track record in the governance field provides clients with unrivalled expertise. With its dedicated team of over 20 full-time researchers, PIRC offers data and reports as well as detailed proxy results, distributed electronically via the Internet, with e-mail notifications to clients and web downloads available (printed reports are, of course, an option, too).
PIRC's Mission
PIRC's mission requires a considerable amount of public advocacy and therefore PIRC's high profile will no doubt continue. This is due to several reasons: PIRC was the first body to begin monitoring company compliance with corporate governance best practice. We were the first body to publish shareholder voting guidelines which underpinned our governance research and our voting recommendations to clients. We were often at the forefront at high profile governance controversies such as executive pay (British Gas AGM 1995), or human rights and environmental violations (Shell T&F AGM 1997).
PIRC's independence
PIRC remains fiercely independent. We do not consult or provide services to the companies we research. Our analysts are encouraged to develop a critical intelligence about the companies they research and analyse. Whilst we base our company assessments on our own shareholder voting guidelines, we can adapt and facilitate our clients own policies where they require it, as well as help clients develop their own voting policies.
PIRC is a management owned business with no conflicting ownership pressures from other companies or trade relationships.
For more information about PIRC or to arrange a meeting, contact Janice Hayward, or call us on 0207 247 2323.
Plcs can do it, too.
The mooted private equity bid for Signet, the
dual-listed owner of the Ernest Jones and H
Samuel jewellery chains, has triggered a
healthy debate over the move from the public
realm to becoming a private business.
PIRC has long argued in favour of staying listed,
and it is interesting to observe institutional
shareholders also coming round to view
private equity bids more critically.
In Signet’s case, a group of institutional
investors, led by Alastair Mundy of Investec
Asset Management1, last week said that it
would block any attempt on behalf of the
board to leave the public market. The key
argument raised in defense of staying put –
that public companies are perfectly capable of
employing ‘conventional private equity tricks’
to boost returns and value - is a vote of
confidence in plc management. In a letter to
the FT, Mr Mundy also pointed out the
importance of resisting short-term profits
offered by the typical private equity tactics of
piling on debt, selling underperforming assets
and then refloating.
PIRC shares the view that it is in
shareholders’ interests for companies to
adopt a longer-term perspective, which
includes recognising the benefits of
maintaining a public market listing. In our
view, de-listing from a main market, even to
AIM, brings significant risks to shareholders -
quick and easy profits have to pay the price of
lower share liquidity, a lower public profile and
reduced analyst coverage. In addition, the
lack of investor oversight and accountability to
shareholders, which may at first trigger a sigh
of relief, poses the risk of poor governance
going unchecked. Instead of falling for private
equity offers, institutional shareholders and
boards of directors should both be more
appreciative of the benefits of public markets,
and demonstrate more patience when it
comes to adopting, and evaluating the
success of measures to create more value.
Now that public companies are warming to
the devices traditionally used by private
equity, the latter may have little to offer. When
companies are re-floated as early as a year
after going private, there is little point in
talking about the benefits of private
ownership. Perhaps Richard Lapthorne, the
chairman of Cable and Wireless, was right
when last year he said that: "[t]he market
complains about private equity buyers when
they have only themselves to blame".
Although Signet says that it has not yet
received a formal bid from Apax and Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts, PIRC wonders whether an
EGM notice will arrive in our offices over the
next few weeks. Or will the board have
heeded the recommendations of some of its
shareholders, and decided to focus on the
long-term by remaining in public ownership?
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