Personal Finance and Corporate Governance: The Missing Link: Product Regulation and Policy Conflicts

Abstract

In the UK today the pursuit of one policy objective—to increase the level of private savings and financial provision by devising simpler, cheaper and often tax privileged retail financial products—obscures and makes it yet more difficult to achieve another stated current policy objective—a more active role in corporate governance by institutional investors. This article sets out the evidence for this claim by examining the structures, regulation and design of some common forms of retail financial product and shows how these together constitute the terms upon which investment capital is both formed and then entrusted to institutional investors. It argues that those terms inevitably affect the level of corporate governance activity that such capital can give rise to.