Changes in Remuneration Reporting Following the UK Corporate Governance Code 2018

This report presents the findings of research carried out by a team of researchers from the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Portsmouth, for the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). The project examined the remuneration policy disclosures of a sample of FTSE 350 companies during periods both before and after the introduction of the new UK Corporate Governance Code 2018 (hereafter ‘the Code’). Additionally, the project analysed shareholder voting on companies’ revised remuneration policies at their 2020 annual general meetings and assessed evidence of the impact of the Code’s new Principles and Provisions in this area. Through these Principles and Provisions, the Code aims to ensure that a company’s remuneration and workforce policies align with its long-term values and success, and that the setting of directors’ pay is done in the context of wider employee pay. The sample of FTSE 350 companies comprised those that revised their pay policies (as the result of the
normal three-year cycle) in 2019/20, and which therefore were the first affected by these changes in the Code.