UK - Research and advisory firm Lintstock has launched a service to help pension fund trustees handle information on asset managers’ governance and voting policies.

The new product, ii-Profiles, has been prompted by UK trade minister Patricia Hewitt’s call for transparency ”from the boardroom to the individual shareholder”.

The UK‘s leading institutional investors are now providing detailed information about their voting policies, said Lintstock co-founder David Ladipo.

But, while the move has been welcomed by investors, “many are finding it increasingly difficult to make sense of the growing mountain of information”, Lintstock said in a statement.

The new web-based database describes the corporate governance and socially responsible investing policies of the leading asset managers, proxy advisors and corporate governance ratings agencies.

The profiles would also enable companies to know the expectations of key stakeholders, asset managers to benchmark performance against peers and funds to determine alignments with investment principles.

The service is delivered under five headings: board balance, shareholder rights, remuneration, social responsibility and investor responsibilities.

“Where institutions have made their voting records available to Lintstock, an analysis of this data is also included”, the firm also said.

The profiles include the contacts details and short biographies of those responsible for voting and policy - “set to become the definitive Who’s Who of institutional engagement”.

Simon Deakin, professor of corporate governance at the University of Cambridge, described it as a “welcome development in the move towards more intelligent investor accountability”.

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