Governance for Owners (GO) is an independent partnership between major institutional share owners, a long-term financial backer and GO senior executives (all of whom have made significant personal investments in the partnership). GO is dedicated to adding long-term shareholder value for clients by exercising owners’ rights.
There are two main product offerings:
The GO European Focus Fund invests in a small number of European public companies where value can be added through exercising owners’ rights to address key structural or strategic governance weaknesses that have historically impaired company performance.
The GO Stewardship Service offers independent corporate governance voting advice on the largest 1500 companies in the US, Europe, South East Asia and Japan, and this is combined with a more intensive programme of enhanced value engagement on selected companies within clients’ portfolios.
Through its full time staff and advisors GO brings together experienced professionals with general business skills, investment management and governance expertise that enables GO to engage constructively with public companies.
In GO’s experience, it is through working with boards and management in a relation manner that share owners can support value creation by companies. GO was established by Peter Butler and Steve Brown in late 2004 and started operations in Europe and the USA in mid 2005. They have experience of shareholder engagement and governance going back to 1998 and have jointly established four shareholder engagement funds since that time.