As part of our twice-yearly Small & Mid-Cap Sentiment Index with YouGov, we gathered data on what governance committees smaller quoted companies have.
To do this, YouGov surveyed 141 small & mid-sized quoted companies, and 52 advisory firms in October and November 2020. You can see the full results of the survey here
We found that:
- Nearly all small & mid-caps have remuneration and audit committees
- The majority also have nominations committees
- More than one in ten now have ESG committees
What committees do small & mid-caps have?
The full breakdown of which committees companies have is:
- Remuneration – 97%
- Audit – 97%
- Nominations – 78%
- Risk – 34%
- Operations – 13%
- ESG – 11%
- Other – 11%
Perhaps the most surprising finding was 11% of companies having an ESG committee. We recently published a research paper along with Henley Business School and investors Downing LLP on ESG in small and mid-caps which you can see here.
For all committee types, small-caps with a market capitalisation of less than £100m were less likely across the board to have any specific committee, reflecting their early stage of development.
Where companies had named ‘other’ committees that they have this was most often a Disclosure Committee.
What committees do advisory firms think small & mid-caps should have?
We also asked advisory firms (investors, lawyers, accountants, etc) what they thought small and mid-caps should have.
They say that companies should regard Risk Committees as important as Remuneration and Audit Committees, and are less likely to see a Nominations Committee as necessary.
The full breakdown of what governance committees advisors think small and mid-sized quoted companies should have is:
- Audit – 98%
- Remuneration – 81%
- Risk – 79%
- Nominations – 33%
- ESG – 26%
- Operations – 19%
- Other – 10%
The QCA produces informative guides, including:
