IR Monitor – 1 July 2026

In this week’s newsletter:

The stories that investor relations professionals need to read this week:

• FTI Consulting on remuneration voting trends in Ireland and the UK: one in ten companies is still receiving significant shareholder dissent on pay policy
• Flight risk fears for 20 FTSE giants that could move to New York: The Times 
• Top-paid CEOs smashed the $200 million payday in 2025. Moreover, how much they were paid often bore little relation to shareholder return observes The Wall Street Journal
• Japan IPOs fall to 15-year low with no rapid rebound in sight: as the Financial Times points out, Tokyo’s surging stocks have failed to jump-start the listings market
• Investors in public companies are losing their voting rights warns the New York Times. SpaceX has joined a growing cohort of companies which use dual class share structures to ensure that many shareholders have little say in how they are run
• And finally … the beautiful game and the inattentive market: on the basis of recent academic research, the World Cup is a great time to bury bad news

This week’s news

FTI Consulting on remuneration voting trends in Ireland and the UK

Early 2026 voting data, covering approximately half of the FTSE 350 and ISEQ 20 companies through 31 May, highlights a persistent gap between investors and remuneration committees over the most effective approach to incentive design. According to a recent report by FTI Consulting, nearly one in ten companies faced significant shareholder dissent on their remuneration policy and 5% of companies received significant dissent on their remuneration report. Restricted share schemes (share awards granted without performance conditions) continue to attract opposition, even where boards have reduced the maximum pay opportunity by the 50% discount generally expected by investors. Where pay concerns have persisted over consecutive years, remuneration committee chairs have faced votes against their re-election of up to 37%. This underlines that investors continue to scrutinise executive pay closely and are prepared to hold directors accountable where they believe remuneration committees are not responding adequately to shareholder concerns.

Flight risk fears for 20 FTSE giants that could move to New York – Times

As the knock on effect of AstraZeneca’s New York listing continue to unfold, an internal analysis by the London Stock Exchange, reported by The Times, has highlighted the potential for a desertion of UK equity markets. The analysis found that up to 20 FTSE 100 companies, including HSBC, Diageo, BP, Shell, BT and Vodafone, could potentially adopt similar direct listings in New York, creating a worst-case £2 billion hole in annual Treasury stamp duty revenues – almost half the £4.3 billion raised from the tax in 2024–25. AstraZeneca’s own move is already estimated to have reduced receipts by around £200 million and has reignited debate over whether the UK’s 0.5% stamp duty on share purchases is undermining London’s competitiveness. While the LSE stressed that the analysis is not a prediction, it comes at a time when London continues to lose listed companies and IPO activity remains subdued. The report reinforces growing concerns over the UK’s ability to retain its largest listed businesses & the longer-term implications for the depth, liquidity and global standing of its capital markets.

Top-paid CEOs smashed the $200 million payday in 2025 – WSJ

Nine-figure CEO pay packages are making a comeback, signalling a renewed appetite among US boards for large, long-term equity awards tied to ambitious growth targets. According to The Wall Street Journal, more CEOs received compensation worth over $100m in 2025 than in any year since 2021, while median pay for S&P 500 chief executives reached a record high of nearly $18m. Much of the increase was driven by “moonshot” incentive packages, which grant substantial stock awards contingent on executives delivering multi-year performance milestones. While such structures are designed to align management with shareholder interests, previous waves of similar awards have produced mixed results for both executives and investors, with some companies cancelling moonshots that aren’t working out. The resurgence also extends beyond the largest listed companies, with more than half of the CEOs earning over $100 million leading businesses outside the S&P 500. The trend highlights a shifting approach to executive remuneration, as boards increasingly rely on outsized equity incentives to attract & retain leadership capable of delivering transformational growth. 

Japan IPOs fall to 15-year low with no rapid rebound in sight – FT

Japan’s IPO market has slumped to its lowest level in 15 years, underscoring a structural disconnect between buoyant equity valuations and primary market activity. According to the FT, the number of initial public offerings in Japan fell to just 18 in the first half of the year, the lowest since 2011, despite the Nikkei 225 rising by around one third over the same period. Total capital raised through IPOs reached only $917m, its lowest level since 2022, with even high-profile listings such as the ¥89bn ($550m) debut of ride-hailing app Go doing little to shift momentum. Market participants point to a shallow pipeline of start-ups capable of scaling quickly, alongside stringent listing requirements, such as multi-year audited revenue histories, as key constraints on activity. The persistence of this IPO drought, even amid strong secondary market performance, highlights a market where valuation support is not yet translating into broader issuance appetite, leaving issuers and investors operating in increasingly divergent cycles.

Investors in public companies are losing their voting rights – NYT

Investor appetite is being tested by an accelerating shift towards governance structures that dilute traditional shareholder influence in listed companies. The NYT reports that companies such as SpaceX have adopted dual-class share structures, with A-class shares carrying one vote and B-class shares carrying significantly enhanced voting rights concentrated among founders and insiders. In SpaceX’s case, Elon Musk retains control of over 80% of voting power despite owning only 40% of shares, reflecting a broader trend seen at firms such as Alphabet & Meta.  While companies with unequal voting rights account for over 15% of the S&P 500’s market value, this figure is driven largely by a small number of highly valued technology groups. Nevertheless, around 20% of IPOs last year featured such structures, up from 9% two decades ago. Critics argue this erodes the “one share, one vote” principle, with institutional investors warning of weakened accountability & limited recourse beyond selling down positions. The growing prevalence of these structures embeds governance considerations more deeply into index composition and passive ownership, reshaping the balance between capital provision and control in public markets.

And finally … the beautiful game and the inattentive market: football as distraction

The FIFA World Cup creates a predictable but underappreciated distortion in financial markets by temporarily reallocating investor attention away from price formation and toward a globally dominant cultural event. According to research by Yosef Bonaparte (Professor of Finance at the University of Colorado Denver Business School), the tournament functions as a large-scale “attention shock”, drawing billions of viewers into a shared emotional and cognitive experience during June and July. The paper argues that this diversion operates through sentiment effects linked to national team outcomes, direct distraction from financial monitoring during live matches, and a gambling-style mindset that shifts risk preferences across investor populations. In practice, these mechanisms reduce trading intensity, slow the incorporation of new information into prices, and weaken the usual responsiveness of markets to news flow. The broader implication is that even highly liquid, information-efficient markets can experience predictable friction when global cultural events temporarily dominate investor cognition.