A FTSE250 Company Secretary writes...
Does anyone have:
- a formal policy regarding engagement with related parties? And/ or
- a formal approval process before entering in contracts with Related Parties
they are willing to share please?
[Any copies can be sent via David Mensley to forward using; dm@equityculture.com Thank you!]
We have a conflicts policy (e.g. avoid them) which to my mind should also cover the Related Parties… however our auditors also seem to be focusing on this at the moment, so we might need to do more this year.
In my last Company, the auditors required us to confirm all the Related Parties of our Directors which led to challenges around divorces, whether investments counted as RPs and a long list of Directorships in maintenance companies for their flats etc.
Therefore I’d be very interested in hearing what others do for this please…
RP is something that our auditors seem to be paying more attention to. Not only are they now requesting we share with them the updated RP Register, but that it also extends to business interests of those RPs. We do not have a formal policy; we just write to the RPs which in our very simply organisation is the plc directors.