In the article “Listed groups face losing out on best talent, says fund boss,” Richard Milne of the Financial Times cites concern from the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund that public company boards are neglecting their core role “to created long-term profitable companies.”
Yngve Slyngstad, who oversees $870 billion in Norway’s oil fund—with stakes in 10,000 companies and on average owns 1.3 per cent of every group listed on a stock market globally – comments on the work his fund has done on corporate governance remarking, “Are we putting boards in a situation where they are too defensive and cautious…? Is it possible that we are burdening the boards with so many different tasks that the main task and focus on the board, which is to create long-term profitable companies, will be inundated by all other types of issues?”
Contrasting that against the focus of Private Equity he says, “Now, they [private equity] are more likely to say: ‘we are better at recruiting and putting together boards for companies’…More and more private equity seems to be of the opinion that it’s easier to get a well-functioning boards in a private, not listed company.”
