4 hours ago
3
UK-listed companies will be able to bury controversies over executive pay for the first time in eight years, a thinktank has warned, after the Labour government shut down a public tracker meant to curb “abuses and excess in the boardroom”.
The public register was launched under the Tory prime minister Theresa May in 2017 to name and shame companies hit by shareholder revolts at their annual general meetings (AGMs). That included rebellions over issues such as excessive bonuses or salary increases for top earning bosses.
However, the Treasury – under the chancellor, Rachel Reeves – instructed the Investment Association (IA), the UK asset management trade body that maintained the register, to shut it down this autumn as part of a wider regulation action plan to increase economic growth by cutting “red tape” for businesses. The closure of the public log follows lobbying campaign by companies including the London Stock Exchange, whose bosses claim bad publicity over executive pay is harming the City’s competitiveness and deterring UK listings.
However, the High Pay Centre, a thinktank, is warning the move will harm transparency and make it easier for companies listed on the FTSE All-Share Index to dismiss investors’ concerns, starting in the 2026 annual shareholder meetings season.
“This is worrying, from our perspective,” Paddy Goffey, a researcher at the thinktank, said. “This would make it more likely that significant cases of shareholder dissent on issues of pay, governance and wider strategy will go unnoticed.”
About 26% of FTSE 100 companies have had a shareholder rebellion against executive pay over the past three years. Dissent is considered a shareholder rebellion if 20% or more of the vote is against a specific resolution. “This reflects the significant levels of dissent within shareholder votes and how crucial such information is for investors and other stakeholders,” Goffey said.
The High Pay Centre acknowledged corporate reporting rules could be burdensome and complex, and should be streamlined. However, that should not include discontinuing tools such as the register that provided genuine value to stakeholders, the thinktank said. The closure added to other “worrying trends” around corporate transparency such as the shift to online-only AGMs.
Rather than closing the register, companies should be forced to provide more detailed explanations about the reason for shareholder dissent and how their boards planned to respond in the future, the High Pay Centre said.
“Ultimately, discontinuing the register will make it much harder and more time-consuming to gather the relevant data and information, as such data could be ‘buried’ in complex filings, AGM results or lengthy reports,” it added.
The decision illustrates the significant cultural shift that has taken place across the City since the May government launched the world’s first public log of dissenting shareholder votes in order to “restore public confidence in big business”.
“It [the register] definitely had a role in holding companies to account in the early years, especially on remuneration, and for a while companies truly did worry about the prospect of being named on the register,” said Yousif Ebeed, the corporate governance lead at the assent managers Schroders.
“And at the time, there was a sense that companies were not giving sufficient weight to shareholder concerns. The register helped shine a light on these companies, to an extent kickstarting an environment where transparency and shareholder engagement have become embedded practice.”
Fast forward to 2025, and City campaigners are raising fears that the UK is losing out on investment to the US, where Donald Trump has embarked on a “bonfire of regulation” in an attempt to lure money and business.
The UK Treasury said in October tit was “grateful to the IA for establishing the register following a request from government” but that the public log had “served its purpose”. The Treasury added that the corporate governance code “already offered transparency for investors”.
Ebeed said most institutional investors would remain “unaffected”.
However, at a time when the government is pushing for more of the public to buy up UK shares, there is a fear that small retail investors could be left at a disadvantage.
“The reduction in transparency and knowledge on company practice could reduce the ability of investors to make informed decisions,” Goffey said.
“Having all this data in one place also makes it easier to track discontent, identify trends and compare companies or sectors. It is plausible that, with the raising of the barrier to holding companies accountable in this way, they [companies] will be less likely to take such dissent seriously and respond appropriately.”
