The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) has selected the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance (Weinberg Center) at the University of Delaware as its successor organization. The announcement was made on Wednesday, July 18.
The Weinberg Center will receive a grant from IRRCi in excess of $1
million as part of the successor transition. With these funds, the
Weinberg Center will materially expand its environmental, social,
corporate governance and capital market research, and also maintain the
full IRRCi research library so that more than 75 research reports remain
publicly available at no cost. The Weinberg Center also will continue
to fund and manage the annual IRRCi Investor Research Award that recognizes outstanding practitioner and academic research.
The University of Delaware and the Weinberg Center share the IRRCis
mission to provide the highest quality research that informs and
empowers decision-makers in the complex arena of corporate governance,
UD President Dennis Assanis said. This announcement is a testimony to
the thought leadership and recognized excellence of the Weinberg Center
in the field of corporate governance and social responsibility. We are
proud that the Weinberg Center will carry on IRRCis important work.
The selection of the Weinberg Center culminates a planned multi-year
succession process undertaken by the IRRCi board that included
consideration of more than 25 organizations.
The IRRCi has become the pre-eminent source of objective and relevant
research examining the intersection of investments with environmental,
social and governance issues, said Linda E. Scott,
the IRRCi board chairwoman. From day one, our plan was to fund
innovative research with our seed money, and then transition the
remaining assets to another well-respected organization aligned with our
mission.
"We selected the Weinberg Center because it is a highly
respected corporate governance thought leader, will sustain IRRCis
important work, and will take our vision to the next level by further
expanding unbiased and objective investor research. The IRRCi Board is
confident that combining the strengths of the Weinberg Center and the
IRRCi will provide investors, corporate boards, executives, regulators,
academics, finance experts, attorneys, and other interested parties
with fact-based information and data on how to best improve our capital
markets and govern public companies.
The grant and the transfer of IRRCis intellectual property to the
Weinberg Center is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2018.
Until then, the IRRCi will continue to publish research, including
studies that benchmark microcap public companies and examine the
governance of data privacy. IRRCi also anticipates announcing the
winners of the 2018 Investor Research Award prior to the transition.
The Weinberg Center is honored to have been selected as the successor organization to the IRRCi, said Charles M. Elson,
Edgar S. Woolard Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance, professor of finance and director of the Weinberg Center at UD. The center looks
forward to continuing the outstanding work and legacy of the IRRCi.
IRRCi was formed following the 2005 sale of IRRC to Institutional
Shareholder Services (now MSCI) to act as a catalyst for thought
leaders, and to sponsor research on corporate governance and corporate
responsibility issues that are important to the linkage of broad
societal issues to investment performance. Since that time, IRRCi has
issued 75 research reports, is in the seventh year of its Investor
Research Award, and has become a trusted source of objective and
impactful investor research. Its research has been cited by regulators,
lawmakers, academics and leading investors.
The IRRC Institute
The IRRC Institute is a nonprofit research organization that funds
academic and practitioner research that enables investors, policymakers
and other stakeholders to make data-driven decisions. IRRCi research
covers a wide range of topics of interest to investors, is objective,
unbiased and disseminated widely. More information is available at www.irrcinstitute.org. Follow IRRCi on Twitter at @IRRCResearch.
John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance
The Weinberg Center was established in 2000 at the University of
Delaware and is part of the College of Arts and Sciences. It is one of
the longest-standing corporate governance centers in academia, and the
first and only corporate governance center in the state of Delaware, the
legal home for a majority of the nations public corporations. For more
information, visit the Weinberg Center website.
