Hélène Vletter-van Dort is Professor of Financial Law & Governance at the Erasmus School of Law and Titiaan Keijzer is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School and PhD Candidate at Erasmus School of Law. This post is based on their recent memorandum. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Agency Problems of Institutional Investors by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Scott Hirst (discussed on the Forum here).
Introduction
On July 3rd, 2018, Eumedion published the first Dutch Stewardship Code (the “Code”), following a public consultation launched in September 2017. The Code provides a set of principles for stewardship by asset owners and asset managers towards Dutch listed investee companies. Eumedion is a cooperative body of mainly Dutch institutional investors, although in recent years, it has been (formally) joined by well-known foreign parties such as BlackRock and Aberdeen. Thus, Eumedion represents a globally highly diversified asset base in excess of € 5 billion. We discuss the background and implications of this first Code and draw comparisons with the Dutch Corporate Governance Code and the UK Stewardship Code.