Kingspan investors urged to vote against chairman amid concerns

• Published date: 11 April 2024
• Author: JOE BRENNAN
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Kingspan shareholders are being urged by an influential investor advisory firm to vote against the re-election of the insulation maker’s chairman, Jost Massenberg, amid concerns about a lack of clear board oversight of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues

Glass Lewis, a proxy advisory company that makes voting recommendations to large investment groups, said Kingspan is not providing enough disclosure on the board’s involvement in governance of environmental and social matters.

“We note that such disclosure is common among the company’s peers and, in light of the recent ESG controversies involving the company, we find the relative paucity of disclosure particularly concerning,” Glass Lewis said in a report in advance of Kingspan’s annual general meeting (agm) on April 28th.

“Given the lack of progress with regards to the company’s disclosure in this area, we believe director Massengberg, as chair of the nominations and governance committee, should be held accountable for these failings.”

Proxy advisory firms have become more focused on ESG matters in recent years, as investors globally take a greater interest. At Kingspan, the firms continue to monitor the fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people in 2017.

The Cavan-based group’s K15 insulation board was used on about 5 per cent of the insulation layer of external cladding of the block, unknown to the company.

However, in late 2020 an inquiry set up by the UK government into the disaster uncovered emails from Kingspan UK staff dating back to 2009 that joked about the fact that fire safety tests on K15 were flawed. The company maintains that tests on K15...