Institutions not vigorous defending investor's interests

The Top 20-30 Investment Institutions worldwide have a de-facto control over nearly all listed companies. If they complain about poor governance practices they only have to blame themselves. While cooperating on business decisions would compromise their decisions and make them insiders they could and should agree on core principles. These could cover executive compensation and closer scrutiny of mergers for a start. Complaining about poorly thought-out Mega Mergers lacks credibility and can only be seen as hand-wringing if not followed up by concrete proposals. Why not start with the muted takeover of BG by Royal Dutch Shell? Prohibit any merger 'agreement' unless shareholders have had a proper say, ban all 'Break fees'! To prevent large holders from squeezing out small shareholders there should be a two-step vote, one where each holder is capped out at a 1% share of the overall vote.
(30 August 2015) 

Exec Comp: nice try but no solutions!

The suggestions that CEO's and other members of the gilded C-suite should be paid with corporate bonds instead of share options or on the basis of some convoluted performance metric are non-starters. The hold that senior executives and their acolytes in academia and the media - not even mentioning mindless holders of their company's shares among the non-fiduciaries in the world of institutional money management or Private Banking - is just too strong. The only way they can be brought to heel is with a simple and fair solution as advocated by Pro Governance, i.e. no special deals (perks, pensions, 'incentive' schemes etc) for the anointed and self-governed few but a simple pay and bonus scheme that treats ALL EMPLOYEES on the same basis. In addition shareholders should have a BINDING vote on compensation for the CEO before it is agreed.
The real problem with CEO Pay (Bloomberg View)
(7 August 2015)