(1) Conflicts of interest
As in all areas of business individuals have to deal with making choices.  Sometimes making the right choice is difficult because of personal self interest or the interest of greater powers.  For example, would pension fund trustees champion good governance if the FD of the sponsoring company (with poor governance) is on the trustee board?  Would investment managers vote against poor remuneration structures if they themselves were paid inappropriately? Are investors contributing to the problem by rewarding the wrong things in their managers? Are the conflicts along the chain of accountability obstructing the progress of good governance?  What are some of the major conflicts that need to be addressed?  Should there be regulatory intervention or can the markets resolve these conflicts?

Provocateur
Svetlana Borodina, the Director of Corporate Governance Services at Standard & Poor's

Provocateur
Paul Lee, Director, Hermes Equity Ownership Service, UK

Provocateur
Phillip Spathis, Manager, Governance & Engagement, Australian Council of Superannuation Investors

(2) Shareholder rights
Very few shareholders would disagree that with more rights they would be more able to hold management to account and in this way the market can impose the checks and balances required to keep management in check. In the US and some other jurisdictions there is still the view that the more shareholders can intervene, the more we take away the freedom of management to make the commercial and financial decisions required to keep the company competitive. What is the right balance? Is it always a good thing for shareholders to get more rights? What are the boundaries - i.e. how do you identify what is too much or too few rights? Does this differ between different jurisdictions? What are the essential shareholder rights and which ones are less important?

Moderator
Michelle Edkins, Managing Director, Governance For Owners, UK

Provocateur
Robert McCormick, Chief Policy Officer, Glass Lewis, USA

Provocateur
Jeffrey Davis, Esq., Senior Legal Counsel, Investments, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Canada

Provocateur
Andrea Di Segni, Head of Operations, Sodali, Italy

(3) Cross border voting barriers
Those of us who have tried to vote globally have experienced the frustrations involved with the complexity of the process. Different jurisdictions have different legal requirements for voting, custodians and sub-custodians dont seem to have any real responsibility for their role in the process, large parts of the process is still manual. We have been talking about this for more than a decade - why are we not making any progress? How do we facilitate change? What changes need to be made? Should there be harmonisation of regulation globally?

Moderator
John Wilcox, Chairman, Sodali Ltd., USA

(4) What is good governance? Should we be reviewing what really counts?
It has long been the expectation that where there is good governance companies are more likely to generate better returns. Yet, after all this time, there are still differences of opinion on the value of good governance as we understand it. Is it really working? Companies with apparently poor governance e.g. entrenched family members on boards, anti-takeover defences appear to be no less successful than companies that give their shareholders greater rights. What is the evidence on the value of good governance? What is good governance - are we missing something? What has the recent economic crisis taught us? Could a barrier be that shareholders do not understand what good governance looks like?

Moderator
Simon Osborne, Joint Head of ICSA Board Evaluation, Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, UK

Provocateur
Julie Hudson, Head of Socially Responsible Investment, Equity Research, UBS, UK

Provocateur
Stephen Davis, Policy Director, Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and performance, USA

(5) Remuneration
Poor remuneration practices have been blamed as contributing to the current economic malais. Was it just easy to point fingers at apparently grossly overpaid executives who have led the world into crisis or did remuneration really play a part? Why is it that executives are still being given huge pay offs for poor performance - how do we improve the linkage of interests between boards and shareholders? Is it just shareholders that need to be considered in linkage of interests - what about considering the pay and condition of employees in setting board pay? What are some of the solutions to ensuring that, in future, boards and senior executives are being appropriately incentivised to behave in the best long term interests of their companies?

Moderator
Sandra Guerra, Principal, Better Governance, Brazil

Provocateur
Sean O'Hare, Partner, Human Resource Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Provocateur
Ted White, Chief Operating Officer, Knight Vinke Asset Management, LLC, USA

(1) What is the future for alternative investments post crisis?

(2) Controlling Shareholders: Minority investor protections

(3) Engagement and activist strategies - How can shareholders better collaborate internationally?

(4) How can shareholders make sure boards are on top of risk management?

(4) Shareholder litigation