QCA's 2016 Highlights

2016 has certainly delivered an eventful year for the QCA!

We have continued to engage with policymakers in Whitehall, Brussels and beyond to ensure that regulation and legislation takes into account the needs of small and mid-size quoted companies. Below, we take a look at our year’s top highlights:

• Budget 2016 included QCA proposal for investing in smaller companies – The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his decision to extend Capital Gains Tax Entrepreneurs’ Relief to external investors in unlisted trading companies for newly issued shares purchased on or after 17 March 2016.
• QCA/RSM Small and Mid-Cap Investors Survey 2016 – The report provides valuable insight into how small and mid-cap institutional fund managers view the market, and what companies can do to attract and retain their attention.
• QCA Dealing Code and Guidance concerning the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) – Working alongside ICSA: The Governance Institute, GC100 and other market participants, we developed a single, industry-led dealing code to help companies comply with MAR and the AIM Rules.
• New QCA Chairman – Gervais Williams, Managing Director at Miton Group plc, was appointed Chairman of the Quoted Companies Alliance in October 2016.
• European Commission protects investment research in SMEs following QCA campaign – The Delegated Directive under MiFID II clarified that certain types of investment research, such as written material that is paid for by a corporate issuer (or potential issuer) to promote a new issuance, or research paid for by the issuer on its company on an ongoing basis, should continue to be allowed and, importantly for smaller companies, should be openly available.
• Revised QCA Remuneration Committee Guide – Our revised guide assists remuneration committee members of small and mid-size quoted companies in setting pay for executive directors and senior management in a fair and reasonable manner.
• 17^th QCA/YouGov Sentiment Index – We tracked key components of business sentiment, as well as views on the EU referendum result and its potential impact on small and mid-size quoted companies.
• QCA/UHY Hacker Young Corporate Behavioural Review – We benchmarked corporate governance disclosures made by 100 small and mid-size quoted companies against the minimum disclosures of our Corporate Governance Code. We made five recommendations for effective governance reporting.
• Successful annual conference 2016: breakout sessions – We reported on the technical aspects of the three breakout sessions at our well-attended annual conference in June 2016.
• Annual Review 2016 – We highlighted the progress of our campaigns, the work of our Expert Groups and our events over the past year.
• We responded to 34 consultations from government and regulators at a national and EU level to champion the interests of the UK’s small and mid-size quoted companies – you can find them here.