The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) warns that a tendency to boilerplate reporting is creeping back in, with companies worried to use comply or explain in case investors and advisers take a negative view of their business and adherence to the Corporate Governance Code.

The problem is quite widespread, with the FRC admitting that it ‘acknowledges a culture has developed across the community including both issuers and investors and their advisers that considers departures from the Code suspiciously’.

‘The result is that companies declare full compliance even where an alternative approach would better serve their shareholders and stakeholders – producing boilerplate reporting that reveals little about how a company is actually governed,’ the FRC said.

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