Navigating a shifting governance landscape with Jen Sisson, ICGN Chief Executive

In this episode of Governance Watch, the Board Agenda podcast, we explore the pressing issues shaping corporate governance with one of the UK’s most influential voices in the field. Our special guest, Jen Sisson, Chief Executive of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), offers critical insights into the challenges and opportunities facing investors, boards, and policymakers today.

As global governance frameworks face mounting pressures, we discuss the evolving regulatory landscape, including the impact of US policy shifts, changes to UK listing rules, and broader concerns over shareholder rights and stewardship. With a wave of regulatory rollbacks threatening investor influence, Jen highlights why strong governance remains fundamental to long-term value creation—for companies, investors, and broader financial markets alike.

The conversation also delves into:

• The US and UK regulatory shifts – How governance is becoming more polarised and the risks of weakening shareholder rights.
• Investor and board relationships – Why engagement is becoming more fraught and how companies can foster more constructive dialogue.
• Audit and stewardship reforms – The role of the UK Financial Reporting Council’s efforts to streamline reporting and what investors want from audit reform.
• The future of corporate governance – Why high governance standards are crucial for market confidence and investment, and whether a "race to the bottom" in regulation could threaten corporate sustainability.

Jen brings a global perspective, comparing governance trends across Europe, the US, and Asia, and offering a pragmatic approach to balancing regulation, growth, and stewardship. She also reflects on the broader need for governance leaders to find common ground in an increasingly fragmented landscape.

As governance debates intensify, this episode provides a timely analysis of where things stand—and what needs to happen next to strengthen corporate governance for the future.

Tune in now for expert insights on governance, leadership, and the evolving role of boards in an era of uncertainty.

For more governance intelligence, visit BoardAgenda.com.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Governance Watch, the board agenda podcast about all things in corporate governance. This week, we have a very special guest with us. She is perhaps one of the most influential voices on corporate governance in the UK, sounding off to regulators and policymakers on everything from dual class shares to shareholder votes. 

Jen Sisson is chief executive of the International Corporate Governance Network, a body that advocates for investment managers and their governors' concerns. Jen has been head of ICGN for almost a year now, in which time she's been outspoken on a number of issues, including the ones I just mentioned. 

Jen, welcome to the podcast. It's, it's a great pleasure to have you with us. Let me just kick off by, let's let's start with a scene setter question. Governance looks as if it's reached a kind of a turning point, with the changing regime in the US. We've seen Donald Trump's White House row back on DEI or EDI as it's most commonly known here. He'll probably kill off climate reporting rules over there. And investors are gonna have to cope with that kind of changing regime in the US whilst managing other kinds of regime elsewhere. How do you see this picture evolving? Is it is it as dangerous as it seems for corporate governance? 

Goodness. Well, that's a big question to start with, Gavin. But, firstly, thank you very much for for having me. Very excited to be here to talk to you all today. I think, you know, ICGN is a membership body, and we have, members who are investors, you know, purchase schemes, asset managers all around the world. And, clearly, we are invested all around the world, on behalf of clients and and beneficiaries. And and one thing that does seem to be happening around the world is a pushback on shareholder rights, a pushback on, standards of stewardship, expectations. What is it that policymakers actually want to happen here? I think perhaps not necessarily always in the way that people think. So we think some of the things that are happening in the world are quite positive, and we see quite different directions happening in different places. But, certainly, what we're seeing in the US, what we've seen in, the UK listing rules, what we see in some activities in Europe are quite worrying for us. And I think at its core, corporate governance remains absolutely, unarguably financially material to the running of businesses. Right? And and we've got to remember here that we are all essentially on the same team. You know, the investors own the companies. It is absolutely in both the investors' and the company's interests that we have sustainable long term value creation. Right? Everybody really wants the same thing. Everybody wants successful companies, over the over the long term. That's good for management. It's good for the workforce. It's good for the shareholder. So part of the challenge we've got is that it's become very, very polarized and very, political. Right? And and a whole bunch of things are getting all kind of muddled up in this discussion. But from an ICGN perspective, we would say, well, do you know what? Good governance is material. Good stewardship is part of fiduciary duty. We need to be thinking about these things as going hand in hand and being a positive. Right? And we should be trying to look at this as a positive thing for growth, for prosperity, for value creation. And so where we do see a tax on shareholder rights and where we see efforts to obfuscate stewardship activity, we just really worry about the potential long term negative consequences that we would see both for our members as shareholders and their clients and beneficiaries, but also for companies. 

What what are those long term consequences, Jen? Well, so I think, first of all, the whole kind of framework doesn't really work if shareholders can't properly exercise their rights. Right? So if you're gonna have a system of dispersed ownership and a board who is supposed to oversee a company and then the company working on behalf of its shareholders, you've gotta have a feedback loop. You've gotta have a mechanism, right, to exchange views, to hold boards and management teams accountable, and also to allow appropriate, messages to flow. And so, for example, measures taken to make it difficult for companies to talk to their investors, that's not good for the company or the investor. Right? The company should want to know what its investors think. They need to have a two way dialogue. We need to be able to have that exchange of views, and so the long term negative consequences of that are pretty clear, I think. Similarly, you know, you're adding a lot of risk into the system for ordinary people's investments if you take away shareholder rights. So, for example, you know, we've talked a lot at ICJN about our concerns around some of the changes to the listing rules here in the UK. Right? Well, taking away that vote on material related party transactions, taking away the vote on significant m and a transactions, really is just taking an investor protection away that adds a lot of risk into the system. And so then what do you have to do instead? You're gonna have to do other things. Maybe we'll see, people's investment and have this process change. Maybe we'll see their stewardship activities change. Very unlikely that you can take rights away and have nothing happen in return. And so we just think we kind of understand policymakers' desire to reinvigorate capital markets, right, to seek growth, to seek to seek prosperity. I mean, that's what investors want too. We just don't necessarily think some of these measures we're seeing at the moment, whether that's here in the UK and the US, are always gonna be the right way to go. 

I think that raises a lot of issues I'd like to come on to in a in a little while. I just wanted to push this, a little bit more, this issue with the US. Obviously, the Trump regime has attacked what might be the nonfinancial parts of, corporate governance responsibilities, the things that have taken a decade decade or so to get up and running and that have been adopted by investors as well. Do you see that affecting other regimes, or will investors elsewhere resist the rowing back on those, big issues? 

So I think the the the slightly different framing I would give this is, I think these aren't nonfinancial issues. Mhmm. Right? And I think that what what is happening is a need for a refocus and a a reiteration of the financially material nature of governance, of the fact that for many companies, climate risk is material. For many companies, you know, biodiversity risk might be material, not necessarily for all companies. But the question really that matters is, is this a material risk or opportunity for your company? And if it is, how are you managing it? You know? Similarly, you know, having a broad set of diverse skills and experiences in your workforce is good for business. Right? So that we don't believe those are nonfinancial issues. Right? In the same way that I think strong and effective boards is a financial issue. Right? And so I think what we're gonna need to all do, right, is focus on remembering what we're doing here and, like, why do we care about this stuff in the first place? It's because we believe this is important as long term investors, right, and as management teams, frankly, running companies for the long term. And so, you know, my hope is that in the end, you know, that the reality of the materiality of this stuff does out. Now, of course, though, we are seeing trends here. We're seeing trends to, strip back on rules, to strip back protections. And we really do worry about that, and that's something that we spend a lot of time advocating to protect here at ICGN. 

Right. Let's come on to some of that. You mentioned in a previous answer, what happened last year that, FCA introduced new rules. Those were to soften the rules around dual class shares, and as you pointed out, soften the well, remove the votes for of shareholder votes on significant transactions. Where does that leave UK governance? Is there is there a major issue now in the ability of investors to oversee their interests? Well, certainly at risk, there's certainly a lot more risk. Now in reality, we haven't actually started to see a lot of new companies listing. Right? So we haven't seen a lot of dual class share listings in the UK, but, certainly, our view would be that a single class share structure is the correct model. That's that's the best way to do it. There's a lot of risk in a dual class model, particularly one that doesn't have any kind of sunsetting provision. And the UK framework now essentially forcing pre IPO investors to sunset and founders not to is kind of an even more confusing approach. Right? So, at the moment, we haven't seen these new listings come with with dual cash shares, and I have to say not particularly shocked by that. I mean, if you even look in the US, the vast majority of companies IPO ing do so with a single stock, share class. Right? So, this has always seemed to me perhaps not really the silver bullet that people think it is. But what I do think we're seeing in and this is also happening across the EU. You know, we've had a lot happen in Italy that this view that somehow weakening governance will attract them with investment is is, in our view, not the right decision. Right? And I think if you look at what's happening at other parts of the world, like in, Korea, for example, in Japan, in Singapore, where governments governments are seeking to strengthen shareholder rights, strengthen fiduciary duty requirements, strengthen those listing rules as a way of saying, hey. You can trust this market. This is a good governance environment. We we believe that's the stronger message for growth to say, hey. We're a high standards environment. You know, we have great governance. We have great stewardship. This is a place you should put your money. Would you reverse those FCA, changes, those reforms from last year? I mean, of course. We were we very clearly said we didn't think it was a good idea, and we would absolutely love it if it would be reversed. But I think we have to be realistic, Gavin, which is the listing rules have changed. Right? So, they they are what they are. And the question now is what do you do as a responsible steward to manage around that. Right? And how do you how do you perhaps enhance stewardship activities to consider these types of things, differently? Because you know what? The the rules change, and we have to continue being long term investors, and we have to deal with the situation we're in. And that and that'll be true everywhere. Right? Well, it it's a really interesting topic because, really, the FCA, reforms were they were very specific in what they did, but they were also indicative, weren't they, of a general change in, direction. I think, maybe people were surprised to see, the Labour Party go at regulation in quite the way that they have. You've already indicated some concern around this. There there is a worry that you trigger a race to the bottom around regulation and governance, and you leave your market worse off. Certainly, I don't think anybody thinks a race to the bottom is a good thing. And and we believe that, actually, high standards of governance and stewardship are a better way to promote growth, and a better way to promote long term sustainable value creation. That I mean, that's the whole raison d'etre of my organization, right, is to try and advocate for these things to be higher standards, and that's true everywhere around the world. 

But how do you how do you make that argument for higher standards in an environment in which everybody is saying, let's soften rules. That's our route to growth or or part of our route to growth. Well, I mean, I I I I feel like I'm gonna sound like I'm repeating myself, Gavin, but as I said, I think you make the argument by pointing out that this is material. Right? We know that we know that these issues are important. We know that there are valuation impacts. We know that poor governance practices have led to to bad outcomes for investors. Right? So, you know, the the fundamental business case for good governance is unchanged. Right? And and, actually, there are, as I said, places in the world where this isn't the direction of travel. Mhmm. It's a decision. It's a decision of policymakers. Like, how are we gonna try and attract investment and invigorate the market? And so we will continue to say that we think that the best way to do that is through a, a quality standards environment. And we're not talking about overburden of regulation, and I know that you wanna talk about some of the things where streamlining can be helpful. And I and we're in favor of that too. Right? What we're talking about is focusing on what's material, doing a good job of it, and creating that, environment of trust that that actually does support long term investment. 

One of the issues that has cropped up is attention, between companies and, government in the past over reporting burdens. And, you know, reporting's very important to investors. Disclosure is a critical part of their stewardship. And I and I wonder where you think that debate has reached. 

Do you know what? I think it's interesting. And and this is another area, actually, where I think we could say investors and companies feel the same. Right? Investors feel a a a burden of reporting requirements as well. Right? And, actually, I don't think anybody thinks erroneous, burdensome reporting requirements that just take a lot of time to prepare and nobody is gonna read are a good idea. Right? And so, actually, if you look at the UK stewardship code consultation, for example, one of the areas of broadest consensus is that it would be useful if we were able to streamline the reporting. And similarly, you know, investors don't want companies spending undue amounts of time and money preparing reports that no one wants either. Right? And this is where they're actually we've seen some fantastic steps forward here. And if you look now at the very, very broad consensus across the global investor community that the ISSB standards and that focus on reporting what is material in your sustainability reporting is the way forward, Like, this is great. We've seen, like, you know, many, many, many countries already starting on the road down to adopting these standards, and that's something that we we work, very hard to try and support. We are big, advocates of those standards and and the, you know, the assurance that goes along with that because it is a consistent, clear, comparable framework specifically designed for investor needs, and we think that's great. And you know what? You need a baseline. And we can all be ambitious for more, and we can want more, but getting that baseline in place is gonna be really important. So I actually think on reporting, the direction of travel is pretty good. Now, clearly, there's a lot happening. We don't know, exactly where it'll all land. We've seen, as as you rightly mentioned, okay, some disappointing rollback of some standard setting. But, actually, you know what? Where these are material issues, they're required disclosures in your accounts, in your management reporting. And so we come back over and over to let's focus on what's material, and what what is material should be reported to your investors. Right? And, actually, it's better for companies to do it themselves because if they don't, someone's gonna try and guess it. And that's in nobody's best interest. Just as much, right, from the investor perspective, people should be reporting on what's material in their stewardship activities. What are the useful things? Right? And these, like, hundreds and hundreds long page reports, frankly, you know what? They spend cost a lot of time and money to make them, and there's a question of what they're being used for. And so, actually, on this one, I think investors and companies even more so, have a shared goal. And is it is is streamlining about removing things that need reporting on, or is it or is it very much that principle of materiality? Well, it's essentially both. Right? Like, if we're saying you should think about what's material and you should report on that, like, show us how you've show us how you've interpreted this and and what you think. Right? That's a good thing. Right? We don't need everything to be be like a massive, big checklist. It's better if there's a bit more, judgment in it. Now, of course, that means then that quality becomes incredibly important. And so that's the governance role, right, is to make sure how are we making those decisions. Are we reporting well? Are we clear? Have we got the right assurance around that? You know? Because, if we're gonna have a more principles based approach that's gonna ask people to take those materiality judgments seriously, we've got to do that well. And that's where their sort of effective governance piece comes into. Where do you think the relationship is between investors and board at the moment around engagement? Yeah. It's interesting. I always think it's, it's one of those things that on an individual engagement level often works very well, but at a system wide level, things have become quite fraught. Right? But, like, actually, most companies, as I've ever experienced it through my career, quite like talking to their investors, and they would like to have a good, dialogue. And sometimes they get frustrated when they can't get an engagement meeting with an investor. But then on the other hand, we seem to have this sort of view that those meetings should be like a battle, right, that we need to defend our position or that we need to be, you know, overly demanding of change. And, actually, of course, everybody has a view. If we didn't have a view, there'd be no point in having a meeting. Right? But it should be a a two way dialogue, and I think, you know, one of the things that we're really trying to do is is get that conversation to be more constructive and a little bit less combative where where there is this kind of feeling. Because I think in reality on the ground in a meeting, it usually isn't combative, but this sort of atmosphere around it has become a little bit strained. I think if we can get back to that understanding of, like, why are we all doing this, that would be a that would be a better thing. Because a lot of this is, you know, with we the media, you know, all sorts of different forums will tend to try and pit one against the other. And, actually, I think that's very unhelpful and kind of forget what we're all doing. So how do you take that tension out of the relationship, 

Jen? How do you get back to that constructive relationship you talked about? Well, again, like, I think in most cases, it it should be quite constructive when it's actually happening. But but I think what is important is seeking to build that mutual understanding. Right? Let's spend some time understanding, well, why are you asking me what you're asking for? And, like, let's make sure that we've got the right people in the room. Right? So let's make sure we've got, you know what? Sometimes you need a board member. Sometimes you need a head of a department. Sometimes you do need IR. Sometimes you need a company secretary. Sometimes you need a sector analyst. Sometimes you need the stewardship person. Sometimes you need a portfolio manager. We shouldn't assume there's a standard right way to do it. So we should be seeking for who are the right people to have this conversation, how can they have that conversation from a point of view of mutual understanding, and, like, really listen to each other. Do you know the investor should not come into the discussion with, like, a banging the fist on the table demand, and neither should the company come in seeking only to defend what they're already doing. Right? Let's understand what we're really after and how we can achieve long term success. That's really what everybody wants. And, obviously, people are gonna have different views sometimes. But I think if we can try and remember, you know, hey. We are all on the same team here, literally. The shareholders own the company. We don't want you to we're not trying to ruin your company. You know? I think that getting to that mutual understanding is would be very helpful. 

How do you think we got to this tension? Is it was it the sheer weight of demands being placed on boards that fed this kind of in engagement friction? And when I'm when I say demands, I mean the regulatory demands, the cultural deduct demands, societal shifts that were all signaling to boards that they had to take on different responsibilities through sustainability, climate change, transition, new reporting rules, that sort of thing. Was it just that weight of, change that created that tension? Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting, isn't it? I think people are I think I think people are you know, people are obviously always sensitive to what they perceive to be negative feedback. That's understandable. We're all people. Right? No one likes it when people say, well, I don't think you're doing the right thing. Similarly, there's been a lot of pressure and changing expectations on what investors should be doing. Right? We've had as as time has moved on and we have a better understanding of the materiality of a broader range of issues, we've all got more to do. Right? And this is because we will learn more, and we know more, and we're able to look further into the future, and that's it just makes everything more difficult. And so I think, you know, inevitably, there's this sort of pendulum, isn't there, of how people feel about things? But I think it can be unhelpful if what we're always seeking is conflict, and we're always looking for, well, you know, where are the where are the real points that are horrible and challenging, and everybody's disagreeing? And, actually, if we focus that, we largely agree on most things, and we want we are seeking the right direction. That that would probably be better. But I I it's it's been a sort of change over a long time. Right? And, you know, people are very sensitive to vote results, which is good. They should be. Right? Because you should care what your investors think. But if we are, if we're seeking perfection, then that's inevitably gonna put a lot of pressure on everybody. I I think it's very difficult. I don't think there's any one reason that anything happens. One of the, changes that we constantly talk around about around corporate governance is, of course, the audit reform agenda, whether whether it will or won't happen. The government has pledged a bill in the King's Speech last year. We've yet to see that. All we have seen is, stories in the press that the government's intentions are slowly being watered down before it publishes anything. I wonder where investors in ICGN stand on that. Do do do you want to see, for example, manage shared audit government stand by that? Do you want to see potential sanctions for audit committee members? Well, so I think the investor community generally is supportive of many of the goals, right, of the audit reform agenda. I think their details are remain unclear, right, what the exact proposals are, and so it's hard to sort of say, do we support something that we don't really know entirely what that means? But I think there are a couple of broad things that I think we can say. Right? So for example and this is actually an interesting sort of just to hark back to our earlier point. Right? There's this view that the UK is somehow a more regulatory environment than than the US. Right? And, actually, this audit reform agenda is like a a perfect example of how that's not really true. Right? Like, the the, director's regime is much softer in the UK. Right? The audit enforcement regime, particularly around things like Sarbanes Oxley I mean, Sarbanes Oxley in the US carries criminal sanction, right, which we're a very long way away from here in the UK. So it is interesting, and there are some gaps in that framework. Right? So for example, the FRC having ability to take action for, accounting issues, right, only for CFOs who happen to be a member of one of the chartered accountancy bodies is a particularly peculiar thing. Right? And so I think there's general support that, actually, the rules should apply to all the relevant people who have those jobs. That's just a sort of level playing field thing. So I think there's quite a bit of support there. I think, you know, would we like to see higher quality audit? Absolutely. Of course, we would. Now should you prioritize competition in the market over quality? I'm less clear cut on that. Right? I think that the quality of assurance services has got to be the lead thing. Now clearly a market that doesn't function well because there's not enough players able to make themselves independent to have sufficient rotation, right, is then a risk quality. But I think you've got to be pretty measured and thoughtful about how you try to change it in what is essentially an entirely global system. Right? And so how can you make changes to one set of practices here in the UK, and how does that interact globally? I think it's something that needs to be, approached carefully. Similarly, should we expand the definition of a public interest entity? Well, again, the the answer to whether people support that's gonna be in the detail. Right? Because it is a big priority for institutional investors to have companies in the UK report against the ISSP standards. Right? So if the if the issue of who is a public interest entity interplays with who has to do that reporting, and then you expand the definition so much that people don't wanna bring their reporting in, then that's it. That's kind of a tough call. Right? And and the detail of what exactly does this mean will matter to where people land on whether they support it or not. But, again, I think a broader suite of companies having that highest quality audit probably is a good thing subject to which companies it exactly is, particularly given, you know, there's a lot more debt in the market than there is listed equity. There's an increasingly big allocations into private markets, and so perhaps it is right that the the definition of those types of public interest companies might change. Have you got any preferred outcomes of the audit reform process that you you really want to see come through? I think there's a strong consensus that we'd like to see ARGA happen and be put on statutory footing, as I said, and and this sort of directive, regime being broadened out to all the people with those jobs. I think, you know, we would like to see audit quality standards continue to improve. I think on the the more specific, like, do you support x or y proposal, it's very hard, Gavin, as you said, to know that without having seen the proposal. Yeah. Just very quickly, the FRC has been consulting on the stewardship code, attempting to streamline that and imposed a lot of reporting responsibilities on investors before. You're generally happy with the way that it it's going. What do you ultimately want to see from a stewardship code? And what are the core principles that you want to see locked down? So I think ICGen is broadly supportive of many of the changes, but we do have some specific areas of feedback that we're really hopeful we will see change in the final version. Right? So at the core, right, we support efforts to streamline, as I said. Right? We think, you know, we need to be getting the right information out there, absolutely, but we also wanna have people being able to focus on getting the job done and doing the stewardship. Right? Same for companies, same for investors. You know, this focus on long term sustainable value creation, Right? That is aligned to the mission of investors and and trying to provide for people's pensions and long term wealth growth. So we support that. We think it's important that we are clear that we mean all of that. Right? We mean long term. We mean sustainable, and we mean value creation. And we think that, actually, that focus on this is about long term sustainable value creation, this is about good stewardship, good governance being a driver of that growth is a is a positive message and is a good thing in in terms of trend of how we can see, you know, people making an argument that that stewardship and governance is important. Now that said, we would like to see the stewardship code more clearly tie itself to fiduciary duty. I think that would be a an easy fix and and hope something we hope to see, the stewardship code reflect in the final version. And importantly, we'd like to see a strengthened message on the need for policy advocacy. So when we're talking about systemic wide risks, right, we've got to remember not all stewardship is about one investor on one company. Right? But, actually, these framework wide issues, things like advocating for good listing rules, advocating for good corporate governance codes, advocating for your shareholder rights are critical parts of your stewardship. And we'd like to see that language strengthened in the code, because we we think that's super important. And, you know, there are very, very variety of other kind of things. You know, a lot of this is gonna get done in the guidance. Right? And so we think having a really strong practitioner voice, right, people who do this as a day job, right, both in, you know, asset owners and asset managers is really important when we're crafting that guidance because you know what? There's no one right way to do stewardship. There's no one one right way to do investing. There's no one right way to run a company. Right? So we've gotta have that range of views, and we've gotta have the, the ability to say, well, actually, you do need some flexibility here. Right? Because if everyone did exactly the same thing, everything would just stop. Right? There'd be no anything. But but, nonetheless, there are things that, you know, we would expect people to do. Right? And so thinking about all the material risks, doing some engagement, doing some, exercise of your rights in voting if you're a shareholder or if you're a private equity holder, right, participating in in, governance. Like, these are really important. And so we wanna see that standard stay high, but we do wanna make sure that we see, flexibility and practitioner input into that guidance. We're coming to the end of our time, Jen. I just wanted to ask you, maybe as a kind of wrap up, whether you're feeling optimistic about, the direction of travel in in governance right now because, these are difficult times. They're bound to have a knock on effect in some way. And I wonder whether you feel things are heading in the right direction or whether there will be, you know, more bumps in the road. 

No. I think almost certainly there'll be more bumps in the road. Right? Like, we it is very hard to to look across the landscape now and feel, feel comfortable. Right? Like, this is a there's probably never been a more important time for good advocacy for strong corporate governance and stewardship. So certainly absolutely not feeling content. Right? And and I don't think many people will be. Right? There's things happening all over the place. I see glimmers of hope. Right? And I see markets where we are seeing different approaches. But what the moment I see is, an absolutely crucial need, right, for people to come together and build that consensus and build understanding and try and take forward a, quality based approach. So we've got a lot of work to do. We're very busy. But, yeah, I'm I'm an optimist by nature. Right? I believe that we can do it if we all work hard and work together, but it's certainly a a time of, some worry and and lots lots of work to do. And probably a bad taste joke, but if you could issue your own executive order to to make to make a change right now, what would it be? I

f I could I'll do a magic wand because I feel like I don't know how I'd write this in an executive order. But but if I had a magic wand, I would I would I would waive it. And at the end of it, we would have a situation where management teams understood that their investors were on their side and that we're all trying to do the best thing here, and that we would come from more of an opportunity of mutual feedback loop and beneficial long term focus, and that we would say, hey. Do you know what? You do need to know what your investors think. You should care what your investors think. You shouldn't be trying to hide from them. You shouldn't be trying to fight them. And, similarly, you know what? Boards are best placed to know lots of things about what's going on in their companies. Right? And so we should listen to them too, and it it should be a feedback loop. And we want everyone to have high standards. We want investors to have high standards and boards too and everyone to be pulling in the same direction. 

Well, I think that's a really strong message to end on there, Jen.