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Business News Labels & Publishers
New governance regime adopted at PRS AGM
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 19 August 2020
It was the Annual General Meeting of UK song rights collecting society PRS yesterday, with the main development being the adoption of a new governance regime for the rights organisation.
As a result of that move, the PRS board will be re-branded as a Members’ Council, with fewer overall directors and maximum terms for those elected to it. There’ll also be a new Writer President alongside the society’s Chairman and a “new electoral college system for director appointments”.
And if those all sound like rather minor changes, well, they do a bit, don’t they? But PRS insists it’s a big change. And that there’ll be “streamlined decision-making through refocused committee reporting structures to give greater time to focus on strategic issues”. And “better engagement for candidacy which will lead to improved diversity on the board”.
Which will be a good thing, I guess. When it happens. If it happens. Elsewhere at the AGM, elections saw three incumbents re-elected to the board and another white man join the team, good times! Newly elected as a Publisher Director was Alexander Kassner from Kassner Associated Publishers, while Roberto Neri from Downtown and Jo Smith from Warner Chappell were both reappointed. On the songwriter side, John Truelove was re-appointed as a Writer Director.
And now here’s PRS Chairman Nigel Elderton with a quote: “I am incredibly pleased to see that our proposed governance changes have been approved. These historic changes will allow us to deliver more engagement, efficiency and transparency for our members. Furthermore, we anticipate the approved changes will lead to more opportunities for members to join the board and by association we hope for greater diversity on the board in the future”.
