Study Aids:
Click the Study Aids tab at the bottom of the book to access your Study Aids (usually practice quizzes and flash cards).
Study Pass:
Study Pass is our latest digital product that lets you take notes, highlight important sections of the text using different colors, create "tags" or labels to filter your notes and highlights, and print so you can study offline. Study Pass also includes interactive study aids, such as flash cards and quizzes.
Highlighting and Taking Notes:
If you've purchased the All Access Pass or Study Pass, in the online reader, click and drag your mouse to highlight text. When you do a small button appears – simply click on it! From there, you can select a highlight color, add notes, add tags, or any combination.
Printing:
If you've purchased the All Access Pass, you can print each chapter by clicking on the Downloads tab. If you have Study Pass, click on the print icon within Study View to print out your notes and highlighted sections.
Search:
To search, use the text box at the bottom of the book. Click a search result to be taken to that chapter or section of the book (note you may need to scroll down to get to the result).
View Full Student FAQs
11.3 Global Investor Concerns
The 2006 ISS Global Institutional Investor Study identified three governance issues that consistently rank among the top three concerns of international investors:Global Institutional Investor Study (2006), p. 36.
- Better boards—the independence of the full board and key committees, the process of nominating and electing directors to ensure independence and the right mix of skills and qualifications, the accountability of boards, and their responsiveness to shareholders—defined the number one issue in all markets except Japan. Investors in four markets ranked board structure, composition, or independence as their number one priority, and investors in all markets except the United States included it in their top three issues.
- Executive pay—linking pay to performance, disclosing performance metrics, and demonstrating the links justifying executive compensation—was judged critical in all markets but Japan. Some of the strongest concerns came from investors in the United States and Canada.
- Financial reporting was a key issue in every market but Australia– New Zealand. More than 70% of investors surveyed cited improved disclosure as the most needed improvement. The lack of trust in current financial reporting extended across markets with distinctive approaches to financial disclosure. U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) came under criticism for its rule-based, sometimes inconsistent or less than informative approach to accounting. The concern over financial reporting was hardly confined to the United States, however. Investors in other markets also voiced concerns, including those that take more of a principles-based approach. In developed markets, the principal challenge was seen to “make sense of the numbers, to see the forest for the trees.” In contrast, in developing markets like China, investors worried about obtaining reliable numbers in the first place.
A major conclusion of the survey was that institutional investors increasingly view corporate governance as a business imperative reflecting the recognition that their own business performance is largely driven by the bottom-line performance of the companies in their portfolios. They also signaled that corporate governance is likely to become an even more important factor in investment decisions in the future because of advances in the investment process, including global commercial databases on corporate governance ratings and the proxy voting records of institutional investors.