Noteworthy list #19

Notable excerpts and links to articles and reports we’ve found worthwhile reading. Though we try to avoid them, some links may be intercepted by ads or may require free log-ins. Please don’t blame us for this.

General News

NYSE Euronext Falls in First Day as Combined Exchange
NYSE Euronext, home to General Electric Co., France Telecom SA and Heineken NV, will list companies with a total market value of $28.5 trillion, including 78 of the world’s 100 largest firms, the exchange said today. Every day the market will handle trading of stocks worth about $120 billion. It will also trade options contracts in the U.S. with the Chicago-based Arca exchange, and futures contracts with Euronext.Liffe, Europe’s second-largest derivatives market.

CEOs ‘still in the dark’
Board members and executives said the most important non-financial drivers of performance are risk to reputation, customer influence, global competition and regulatory emphasis on non-financial measures. They also identified greater scrutiny by the media and increasing power of lobbyists and organizations.

Moody’s Plans Credit Rating Cuts to 40-50 Banks After Protests
The new system relied too much on assumptions about government support, said John Raymond, a London-based analyst at CreditSights Inc. The independent bond research firm said last month that it wouldn’t use Moody’s “worthless” new ratings in a report titled “Moody’s Makes Aaas of Itself.”

Nasdaq to Create China Index to Court International Listings
The Nasdaq China Index will initially comprise 30 companies listed on any U.S. exchange, including China Mobile Ltd. and Baidu.com Inc., Steven Bloom, Nasdaq’s senior vice president of financial products, said in an interview.

Law Firms Compete for Chinese Companies’ IPO Action
Up until a few years ago, most of the IPO action came from state-owned Chinese companies that went public. Such deals frequently top the billion-dollar mark, and they’ve shifted to the Hong Kong public markets in the past few years. China’s mushrooming private economy has since boosted the number of deals. More Chinese IPOs are on the way, according to NYSE spokesman Christiaan Brakman. “We have a very strong pipeline of those more entrepreneurial companies,” Brakman said. “Several leading companies are planning to do IPOs in April or May.”

Regulation

SEC Commissioners Endorse Improved Sarbanes-Oxley Implementation To Ease Smaller Company Burdens, Focusing Effort On ‘What Truly Matters’
The SEC’s Commissioners today endorsed the recommendations of the agency’s professional staff to eliminate waste and duplication in the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance exercise, in a move that will particularly benefit smaller companies. The Commissioners urged the SEC staff to continue to work closely with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to make the internal controls provisions of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 more efficient and cost effective.

UK’s FSA to probe governance of foreign listings
The Financial Services Authority is to examine the quality of London’s markets after investor concern over the increasing amount of listing by foreign companies.

New ASX governance principles for corporates delayed
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Corporate Governance Council announced the updated Principles of Good Corporate Governance and Best Practice Recommendations will now come into effect on January 1 next year.

Governance & Sustainability

Open season - why America’s boards face awkward times in the auditorium
“There is a real concern that corporate America is in denial about who controls the company,” says Paul Munn, director of the equity ownership service at Hermes. “There should be no conflict between companies and shareholders. We are all working for the same goal: a better valued company.”

2007 Proxy Season Preview: Social Issues
For the 2007 proxy season, the second-leading category of social issues proposals–after those concerning climate change–asks companies to disclose and better monitor their political contributions, including, in many cases, their political activities through trade associations. So far, proponents have filed more than 60 such resolutions. Proposals also abound on long-standing concerns for socially focused investors, including those seeking to expand equal employment protections to employees regardless of sexual orientation and those to improve animal welfare.

Cleaning Up Carbon
Pressure to curb carbon emissions is mounting. How companies respond will affect much more than their bottom lines.

CEO pay rises almost 10 percent in 2006 - survey
Chief executives’ median total compensation for fiscal 2006 was 9.29 percent higher than for fiscal 2005, after a 15.98 percent increase the prior year, according to the study by governance research group The Corporate Library.

Oil firms’ renewable investments lag image
Despite the millions spent publicizing their green credentials, none of the big international oil companies publishes figures for annual investments in renewable energy, making it hard to judge whether actions match adverts.

A corporate governance gadfly irks CEOs
Shareholder rights will get strengthened not by government action but through shareholder initiatives. “When changes come in this form, they have a kind of legitimacy that is hard to oppose,” he says. “It’s the market imposing certain arrangements.”

Tech & Web

Young Investors Heading To The Internet For Financial Help
Instead of tapping the knowledge of a professional adviser, 36% of 18- to 24- year-olds and 49% of 25- to 34-year-olds said they were actively planning on their own. Their research resource of choice: No surprise, it’s the Internet.

Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why!
The early results from Komjuniti, as it turns out, are not encouraging: 72% of their 200 respondents said they were disappointed with real world company activities in Second Life; just over 40% considered these efforts a one-off not likely to last. More worrying, a mere 7% of respondents in the study say that the SL-based promotion would have a positive impact on their future buying behavior.

Twitter: Is Brevity The Next Big Thing?
The lure of Twitter—as well as its Achilles heel—is its simplicity. You “twitter” (yes, it’s a verb) by answering the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. (How much information can actually be conveyed in 140 characters? As a yardstick, consider that this parenthesis contains exactly that number of letters and symbols.) These dispatches, sent as often as you like, are immediately blasted out to fellow Twitterers who have chosen to “follow” you, i.e., see everything you twitter by phone, IM or Web. One doesn’t respond to a twitter, a big advantage over more intrusive forms of communication like instant messaging.

Related posts:

1. Cool ticker symbol up for grabs
2. U.S. regulators cut 1,000 slacker firms more slack
3. Lululemon takes the PR low road
4. Who said the sell-side is dead?
5. Where’s IR leadership on firms who track investors?

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