Resources
We conduct original research on the causes of short-term business decisions and work to find practical solutions.
Earnings Guidance | Article
1 August 2018 - Each stakeholder along the investment value chain must play a role in shifting to longer-term decision making. Today’s investment community, in large part, has become fixated on hitting immediate goals, losing sight of savers’ broader objectives in the process. An effective way for both companies and investors to correct this imbalance is to avoid short-term dialogue, including practices like offering and evaluating quarterly earnings guidance, and instead center their dialogue on strategies that build support for long-term growth. Building on our earlier work on the investor-corporate dialogue, FCLTGlobal...
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23 July 2018 - FCLTGlobal discussed private equity last month in London, where CEO Sarah Williamson joined a panel hosted by Schroders, led by Gavin Ralston, Head of Thought Leadership and Official Institutions.
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15 May 2018 - National (and often international) attention was focused on the unveiling of the White House’s revamped tax plan for much of 2017. Regardless of your political leaning, the impact of the bill on US companies was undeniable; the CBO has predicted a $300B+ benefit to US corporations within a decade of the bill’s passage. This impact raised a major question: what will these firms do with their newfound capital? While this question remains largely unanswered, new data from Q1 earnings season suggests some of this cash is headed...
Investor-Corporate Engagement | Article
24 April 2018 - Let’s start with the facts: it is critical to be clear about what we know and what we do not. Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria and Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim started 2018 Focusing Capital on the Long Term Summit by administering a quiz on many facets of long-term investing to dispel misconceptions and provide participants with foundational knowledge to apply for the rest of the day. This questionnaire, created by Serafeim and Nohria, explores the incentives, institutions, and behaviors that give rise to short-termism....
Investor-Corporate Engagement | Article
13 April 2018 - Spring is in the air, baseball has begun here at FCLTGlobal headquarters in Boston, and the public company earnings reporting season is upon us – thus begins that familiar, yet often tedious, quarterly dance done by companies and the analysts that cover them. The quarterly earnings call looms large on most corporate calendars, regularly consuming significant amounts of time to prepare, but are investors and companies making the best use of this venue for regular interaction? Many of the most commonly asked questions on earnings conference...
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12 March 2018 - On 28 February, the 2018 Focusing Capital on the Long Term Summit convened more than 150 members and select business leaders in a closed-door event to address the problem of short-term behaviors in capital markets.
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16 February 2018 - The following, by Robert C. Pozen, first appeared on Fortune.com on Feb. 9. Should public companies focus on earning profits for their shareholders, or should they serve broader societal needs? Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, the largest fund manager in the world, recently issued a letter to company CEOs stating: “Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.” Yet the same letter tells public companies that they should adopt a strategic plan with “a path to achieve financial performance.” The...
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13 February 2018 - Another January has come and gone, and another week of discussions at Davos has drawn to a close.
Mandates | Article
18 January 2018 - Asset owners often have very long-term investment goals such as funding liabilities, building an endowment for perpetuity or providing for subsequent generations.
Metrics | Article
30 November 2017 - Research consistently proves that many of today’s corporate executives believe that short-term pressure is growing, that it is changing their business decisions and that of their companies, and that these changes are destroying value for their shareholders. There are many ways to stem the tide of corporate short-termism – one being moving away from quarterly earnings per share (EPS) guidance, which FCLTGlobal has recently contended to be an unneeded industry relic. Rather than issue such guidance, companies would be better off providing investors with a plan focused on...
Governance | Article
17 October 2017 - FCLTGlobal’s Sarah Williamson, CEO, and Matthew Leatherman, Director of Research, recently sat down with Ronald O’Hanley to discuss the importance of long-term investing and the role of the board in affecting long-term change. Ronald O’Hanley is President and CEO of State Street Global Advisors, the investment management arm of State Street Corporation and an FCLTGlobal member. Sarah Williamson: What does long-term investing mean in a State Street Global Advisors context? Ron O’Hanley: As the third-largest asset manager in the world, we manage roughly $2.6 trillion, of which about $1.5 trillion in...
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17 October 2017 - Over the past few weeks, FCLTGlobal and several of its Members met at forums in both London and Singapore that underscored the rising importance of long-term decision making to managers and investors internationally, and the rapidly growing desire for change. Our first stop was in Singapore to take part in the second annual Insights Forum, hosted by GIC, one of the world’s largest investment firms. The event brought together over 100 senior business leaders to weigh in on the theme “Asia’s evolving role in an uncertain...