Finance Watch’s panel of distinguished long-term thinkers gathered to address this question at an afternoon seminar on 17 October 2012. The speakers included Professor John Kay, whose July report “The Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making” contains several ideas that might translate into EU regulation, Sharon Bowles MEP, Thierry Philipponnat of Finance Watch, Philippe Herzog of Confrontations Europe, Jérôme Haas of the French Accounting Authority (ANC) and Trelawny Williams of Fidelity International.
Two themes emerged strongly during the discussion: structure and simplicity.
According to Professor Kay, if regulation can ensure that the incentives are right, then long-term behaviour will follow. He said this means regulating structure not behaviour, for example by shortening chains of intermediation or paying fund managers for their long-term absolute performance instead of their short-term relative performance.
According to Sharon Bowles, simplicity is the key. Stripping out layers of complexity would remove costs and help to restore trust.
The panel discussed these and other ideas in depth, including fiduciary duties, changes to the IFRS accounting rules, direct infrastructure investment and localism, the tax treatment of debt and competition law, among others.
To download a full summary of the seminar, click here. Other materials from the day are below, including an interactive video with all the speeches and a short edited highlights video.
Introduction
- Thierry Philipponnat, Secretary General, Finance Watch (download pdf or watch full speech video)
Presentation of the final report of ‘The Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making’
- Professor John Kay (watch full speech video)
Keynote speech
- Sharon Bowles, Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (watch full speech video)
Panel discussion on
Tools available at EU level to stimulate long term investing
Panellists (from left to right):
- Trelawny Williams – Global Head of Corporate Finance, Fidelity International (watch full speech video)
- Philippe Herzog – President, Confrontations Europe (watch full speech video)
- Professor John Kay (watch full speech video)
- Jérôme Haas – Presiden of French Accounting Authority, ANC (watch full speech video)
- Sharon Bowles – Member of the European Parliament (watch full speech video)
- Moderator – Thierry Philipponnat, Secretary General, Finance Watch
Presentations from the conference are provided with permission from the speakers, who retain copyright to the content. Copyright to the photos and videos belongs to Finance Watch. Photos may be downloaded from Flickr provided the photographer, Charles Kinoo, is credited in any subsequent publication. To request high resolution photos, please contact us.
How can regulators help financial markets to become less short-term?
An “Investing not Betting” event
This page contains the conference materials from Finance Watch’s Kay Review event on 17 October 2012.
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