ROB ROSE: The ‘quantum shift’ in the way your pension money is managed
In the past few years, the asset managers who invest your pensions have finally been stepping up, rising to the expectations society has of them
You may not have noticed it, but there has been a quantum shift in the way the people who manage your pension money are going about their jobs. Belatedly, these asset managers are demanding accountability from the companies in which they invest your cash. It couldn’t have come soon enough. New figures show that between September last year and May this year, Old Mutual voted against 37% of remuneration policies at JSE-listed companies, Allan Gray vetoed 28.6% of them and Coronation vetoed 20.9%. This emerges from PwC’s annual remuneration survey, released last week. It hints at a far greater activism from investment managers than used to be the case — which bodes well for the prospects of holding CEOs accountable. Of course, it’s not a wholesale conversion. On the other side of the activism scale are Stanlib Asset Management and Investec Asset Management, which both voted against just 6.5% of remuneration policies. Still, it’s a far cry from a few years back, when most asset managers...
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