The UK Stewardship Code
The UK was the first country to turn stewardship expectations into policy through the enactment of the 2010 Stewardship Code. The UK Stewardship Code, revised in 2012 and 2019, sets out key principles of effective shareholder stewardship, in the sense of constructive engagement and monitoring, to be followed by UK-based institutions on a comply-or-explain basis. Since then, UK-inspired stewardship principles have been exported into other countries in Europe, i.e. Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and as a basis for the recently amended EU Shareholder Rights Directive 2017, but also as far as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan, and the US, and advocated globally by the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN).
UK Stewardship Code