Investors' hopes for retailer therapy

Following on from our last blog update about public sector pensions, today's papers make much of the latest controversy around MPs' pensions. Frankly, even I'm struggling to come up with a defence for providing such a generous scheme at the taxpayers' expense, and Ros Altmann explains more eloquently than I why MPs' pension arrangements elicit such rancour.

One area in which pension funds, and other investors, are likely to assume a higher profile in the coming days is over the trouble brewing at Marks & Spencer, ahead of the company's AGM in a couple of weeks' time. As Richard Fletcher points out in today's Telegraph the M&S boardroom has resembled a soap opera in recent times. The latest cliffhanger surrounds growing shareholder pressure on Sir Stuart Rose to relinquish his executive chairmanship, which runs counter to best practice as set out in the Combined Code on corporate governance. According to corporate governance advisers PIRC, Sir Stuart's role is "a significant breach" of the Code, which seeks to guide companies on how best to run themselves in accordance with principles agreed by shareholders and directors, and which advocates the separation of roles of Chairman and Chief Executive, mainly to avoid the concentration of power in one pair of hands.

The Financial Reporting Council is currently consulting on potential changes to the code, and among the long list of names who have responded to the consultation is a certain leading High Street retailer. Among other points raised in Marks & Spencer's response is the suggestion that it would be "helpful to differentiate between the roles of chairman and chief executive being combined and the chief executive stepping up to be chairman". A point which corporate governance advisers such as PIRC would presumably endorse.

AF