Campus

Transparency of management board emoluments leaves a lot to be desired

BVI (German association for investment and asset management) jointly with Ivox has looked into this year’s documentation of the shareholders’ meetings of 160 companies grouped within the DAX family (DAX, MDAX, SDAX and TecDAX) comparing them to the analytical guidelines for shareholders’ meetings published by BVO.

The guidelines are merely recommended courses of action for good company conduct that go in the direction required by the German Code of Corporate Governance without, however, slavishly copying them. Members of BVI fund-manage 90 thousand million Euros worth of shares on behalf of German companies. The funds are the trust they enjoy of their clients. What emerges is disappointing, the quality of corporate governance often falling short of the standards required. Above all, notes Thomas Richter, managing director of BVI, members of the management board ought to look at themselves in the mirror more often. The survey commissioned by BVI reveals an ever-increasing number of acts in open violation of the guidelines, above all at the point in the agenda when discharging the management board.