Your Homework Assignment

Introduction

This document is an assignment brief for the Certificate in Corporate Governance. Using a case study, students are encouraged to understand and evaluate governance practices effectively. As outlined in the Assessment Guidance shared with you, this assignment focuses on a specific organisation that you will be asked to analyse.

The written assignment requires you to analyse an existing organisation and to submit a report based on your analysis.

This written assignment is worth 60% of your overall result.

Submitting the assignment

The assignment should be submitted by the deadline of 30th of May 2025 through the exam platform, Rogo.

You will receive an email from no-reply@rogo.email with instructions to access your assignment brief and to upload your completed assignment.

Upon receiving the email:

• Click on the link to access Rogo. This will direct you to the assignment brief.
• As you follow the instructions and click through to the final page, you will be asked to upload your assignment. Only upload and select ‘Finish’ when you are ready to submit your final assignment. You will only be allowed one attempt at submitting your assignment.
• You may log in and out of Rogo to view the Assignment brief.
• Return to Rogo before the deadline when you are ready to submit your assignment.
• You are advised to draft your assignment offline on Microsoft Word and use Rogo to upload your completed assignment.

Submitted assignments will go through a rigorous quality assurance process of standardisation, marking and moderation. Results will be released on the 19th August 2025.

If you have any questions about your assignment, you should email examinations@cgi.org.uk.

Format of the assignment

The assignment must include a cover page with the following details:

• Your student number which is available on MyCG (do not include your name anywhere in the assignment).
• The title of your report.
• Confirmation of your word count.

The assignment should be submitted as a single Microsoft Word document (in .doc or .docx format). It must be written in a formal report-appropriate font, using font size 11, and 1.5 line spacing. Footnotes and endnotes are not permitted.

A bibliography must also be included.

Word count

The maximum word count for this assignment is 3,500 words. You are allowed a tolerance of +/- 10%.

All the words in your assignment count towards the overall word count, including in-text references, headings and sub-headings and tables. Words on the cover page and within your bibliography do not, however, count towards the word total number of words.

Plagiarism

The Oxford Dictionary defines plagiarism as ‘the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’. Plagiarism is a serious academic matter and, in the most serious of cases, could result in you being removed from the course. It is therefore important to ensure that statements made within assignments which are taken from, or informed by, others are appropriately acknowledged.

Guide to Referencing

The Chartered Governance Institute does not require the use of a specific academic referencing convention, although you may use one if you wish.

If you have never used a referencing system before, the APA style of referencing is included as default within Microsoft Word (under the ‘references’ tab) and there is a handy online guide available, which provides examples of how to correctly cite over 100 different types of reference..

Whether you use an academic referencing convention or not, it is important that any content which is not your own is appropriately acknowledged. If there are different versions of the same document, for example where they have been revised or updated, it is helpful to include the year of publication or the version number so that the reader knows which source material you are referring to.

You can acknowledge other people’s work in different ways:

Assignment Question

Case study content

Aston Martin Lagonda Holdings Plc (“Aston Martin”) is a UK company that manufactures luxury sports cars and operates a Formula 1 racing team. The company is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 350 index. As such, it is required under the Listing Rules to report on its compliance with the UK Corporate Governance Code.

The corporate governance statement in Aston Martin’s 2024 Annual Report and Accounts* – covering the financial year ending 31 December 2024 – will reveal, yet again, that Aston Martin:

1. does not comply with several provisions of the UK Corporate Governance Code regarding the composition of the board of directors; and
2. does not meet the targets set by the FTSE Women Leaders Review for the percentage of women on boards and senior management positions.

Notwithstanding these “governance failures”, every resolution put forward at the company’s 2024 AGM (apart from the advisory vote on the directors’ remuneration report), was passed by a majority of over 95%, with over 70% of the company’s shareholders participating in the vote.

* Please note that Aston Martin is expected to publish its 2024 Accounts towards the end of March. In the meantime, should you wish to do so, you can read about the areas in which it is non-compliant in its 2023 Accounts. However, you should not base your answer solely on the 2023 Accounts as the company has recently appointed a woman as a replacement for one of the male independent non-executive directors.

Question

Bearing in mind the company’s own explanations for non-compliance in its corporate governance statement and other information in its 2024 Annual Report and Accounts, in particular about its shareholder structure:

1. analyse and explain the reasons for Aston Martin’s non-compliance with the various Code provisions and its failure to meet gender diversity targets for the board;
2. explain what practical steps the company would need to take in order to become fully compliant in these areas;
3. explain what actions shareholders opposed to the company’s practices could take to put pressure on it to make changes and why these are unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future.

Recommend four ways in which the corporate governance disclosures on Aston Martin’s website and in its Annual Report and Accounts could be improved, making reference to examples of good practice from other companies and examples of good practice from the FRC’s Annual Reviews of Corporate Governance Reporting (2024 Review and 2023 Review). [At least one of your recommendations should relate to Aston’s website disclosures and at least two should relate to its Annual Report and Accounts. You are not required to analyse Aston Martin’s corporate governance practices for the purposes of this question, but the way in which it makes disclosures].

What further changes will Aston Martin need to make to its corporate governance practices and disclosures in order to implement the changes made to the 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code? [The key changes to the 2024 Code for these purposes are summarised in the Additional Materials for this course. As part of your answer, you should summarise any Code changes that you think Aston Martin has already implemented and include references to its website or 2024 Annual Report in support of your view].

You are required to answer all three parts. The amount you write for each part should be guided by the percentage marks awarded for each part.