What Do Asset Managers Really Want (From Companies)?

Tuesday, March 29, 2022 | 7:00–8:00 PM (EDT)

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 | 8:00–9:00 AM (Japan Time)

Featuring:

Jamie Allen, Secretary General, Asian Corporate Governance Association

Benjamin Colton, Global Head of Asset Stewardship, Voting & Engagement, State Street Global Advisors

Moderator:

Alicia Ogawa, Project Director for Japanese Corporate Governance and Stewardship, Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB), Columbia Business School

What you'll learn:

● The meteoric rise of ESG investing strategies has made the role of asset managers more important than ever before in the history of the industry. How do asset managers actively seek to shape and change the behavior of companies on a variety of financial and non-financial issues? How do their approaches differ from country to country?

● The ESG agendas of asset managers need to be tailored to the specific legal, regulatory, and cultural environment of different countries. Diversity has a different context in Japan than it does in the US, for example. CEO compensation is often an issue of too much in the US, and too little in Japan.

How do global asset managers balance their ESG agendas to reflect local circumstances? How do they define ESG priorities for companies with global operations and global supply chains that operate across many countries, cultures, and legal systems?

● What are the key issues on which asset managers are coming together as an industry to promote in Asian countries as a whole vs. Japan, and vs. the US? How has the global pandemic affected this agenda?

About the Speakers:

Jamie Allen is the founding Secretary General of Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA), an independent membership association carrying out original research, advocacy and education on corporate governance in Asia since 1999. A published author, he has more than 30 years of experience writing about Asian business, finance, and economics. Prior to founding ACGA, he was a consultant providing customised research to multinational companies. From 1992 to 1995, he was editor of Business Asia for the Economist Intelligence Unit and a contributor to The Economist magazine from 1994 to 1996. He is one of the main authors of Awakening Governance: The evolution of corporate governance in China and CG Watch 2020 – Future promise, the two reports published by ACGA in July 2018 and May 2021 respectively.

His past public service roles include being a member of the Public Shareholders’ Group, formed by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), sitting on the Listing Committee of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, and serving on the Operations Oversight Committee of the Financial Reporting Council of Hong Kong.

In 2017, he received an International Corporate Governance Network Lifetime Achievement Award and a Regional CG Recognition Award from the Minority Shareholders Watch Group of Malaysia.

Benjamin Colton is the Global Head of Asset Stewardship, Voting & Engagement at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA). He and his team are responsible for developing and implementing SSGA's global proxy voting policies and guidelines across all investment strategies, and managing SSGA's proxy voting activities and issuer engagement on ESG issues.

Prior to his current role, he was based out of Tokyo, Japan serving as the Head of Asia-Pacific leading SSGA’s Asset Stewardship efforts across the region. Prior to joining SSGA in 2018, he worked at Norges Bank Investment Management for a total of eight years based in Oslo, Norway and later in New York City.

He earned Master’s degrees from both the London School of Economics & Political Science and the University of Nevada, Reno.

Cosponsors:

Center on Japanese Economy and Business, Columbia Business School

APEC Study Center, Columbia University

Admission and Contact:

This is a free event. You must register for the webinar to receive the login details. Participants will receive a link to access the live webinar upon registration.

If you have questions about the event, please contact us at cjeb@gsb.columbia.edu. For more information about other CJEB events, visit our website or contact cjeb@gsb.columbia.edu.