New year honours: Governance pioneer made a Companion of Honour

Sir Adrian Cadbury has been a pioneer for corporate governance reform for more than 20 years, but has been made a Companion of Honour in part for his long association with and support of Birmingham’s Aston University, where he served as chancellor for a quarter of a century until 2004.

The Cadbury report, published in December 1992 by a committee that Sir Adrian chaired, came in response to a number of corporate scandals in the UK, such as the insolvency of Polly Peck and Robert Maxwell’s fraudulent activities. Today’s corporate governance code, which is overseen by the Financial Reporting Council, evolved from the Cadbury reforms, which have withstood some of the most testing times for financial markets.

At the heart of the code is a “comply or explain” approach on such issues as remuneration and board independence that avoids binding laws. At the 20th anniversary of the code’s launch, Sir Adrian said that the “comply or explain” policy had made a profound impact on corporate governance worldwide. “It became a principle, a watershed in thinking, which has endured in academia, regulation and practice,” he said.

The 85-year-old rowed for Britain in the 1952 Olympics and is one of just four people given a “companion of honour”. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and retired in 1989 from the chair of Cadbury, the family’s chocolate business, which was controversially sold to Kraft, the US confectionery company, in 2010.

As a representative of the Cadburys’ widely respected Quaker values and history of philanthropy, Sir Adrian was seen as a good choice to make the case for corporate governance reform and has continued to raise awareness about the need for it in the years since the code’s launch.