Last month, the Australian Council of Super Investors, which represents the country's big industry super funds, had an interesting conference on corporate governance. One their guests, Stuart Grant from Delaware law firm Grant & Eisenhofer , gave a paper outlining 9 flash point issues confronting US business and investors. Some of them are unique to the US and all are worth examining.

The nine are the ridiculous situation regarding majority voting ("We pride ourselves on being the great democracy. We run around the world trying to impose our democracy on everyone, except when it comes to corporate voting, because then we're talking about money and we don't want to really trust the owners to vote on what's going to happen with their money and who's going to run it"); proxy access, a situation where the Securities and Exchange Commission traditionally opposed giving shareholders access to the management proxy so that they could make changes to the company that they own ("For years, the SEC was the great protector of the shareholder. In fact the seal of the SEC says, 'To protect the investor'. Under the current administration, which is not necessarily widely popular, either in our country or throughout the world, they're thinking of changing the seal to say, "To protect the investment banker", because it seems like the investor has been forgotten"); executive pay; options backdating, including its variations of springloading and bullet dodging; hedge fund activism; private equity buyouts and the worrying potential for conflicts of interest that come by involving management; trans-national co-operation which will grow as a force; class actions and the spread of that remedy overseas; and attempts by the US Government and business to limit class actions.

Grant also makes some interesting points about the pressure being placed on corporations to embrace environmental and social sustainability issues linked to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). It might be happening in other countries, he said, but it was not happening in the US.

"As popular as Al Gore is here in Australia and in Europe, he's not in the White House and he's not there for a reason," Grant said. "Americans, as of yet, are not interested in environmental, social sustainability or any kind of aspect of the UNPRI. It's an embarrassment, but it's something that's reality. If that's going to happen in the United States, it's going to be because the Europeans and the Australians drag us there kicking and screaming."