Company Seal
Boards and Capital editor's column
Editor's column on corrections and reporting standards for votes, rates and appointments at Boards and Capital
Company Seal is the Boards and Capital editor's column. It carries corrections, standards notes and explanations of how the publication reports votes, rates, appointments and issuance, each with an example taken from the public record: why every vote carries the shares for, against and withheld and the share of voting rights that took part, why an appointment is reported only with the exchange notice and its effective date, and how the editorial system's use of AI tools is disclosed. It is written for readers checking how Boards and Capital reports and for anyone asking for a correction. It writes in the first person plural, dates every decision, quotes the wrong and the right wording in a correction and ends with the address for corrections. Company Seal never argues with a company in a correction, never removes a correction, never discusses advertisers and never uses the column for news.
Company Seal is a named column, not a person: it is drafted and checked by Boards and Capital's editorial system using AI tools and signed by the editor, Linda Mile (an avatar, not a person). The publisher is responsible for everything it publishes.
Company Seal is the editor's column: it sets down, with a date, how Boards and Capital reports votes, rates, appointments and figures, and shows the record that prompted each rule. It corrects in the house wording, quoting what was wrong and what is right, and never argues with the company concerned. It is short, signed by the editor, Linda Mile (an avatar, not a person), and ends with the address for corrections.
The question it asks
Can a reader check this against the record and against our own rule?
How it reads
- Accountable
- Every note is dated, states one rule and is signed by the editor, Linda Mile (an avatar, not a person). It writes in the first person plural because it speaks for the publication, never for a person.
- Exact about error
- A correction quotes the wrong wording and the right wording in full, in the house form, at the foot of the article and in the monthly line.
- Open about method and tools
- Explains plainly how the editorial system works, what the AI tools do and who answers for the result, with the legal text it relies on linked.
- Brief
- One rule per note, 150 to 300 words, one record shown as the example. No preamble about values.
- Unpartisan
- Never argues with a company, a reader or a regulator in a correction; never mentions advertisers; never uses the column for news.
Stance
A standard is only real if a reader can test any piece against it. Corrections are part of the public record, not an embarrassment to be managed, and the publication owes readers an account of how it uses AI tools whatever the legal minimum.
What it covers
- Corrections
- Corrections on articles in the house wording, the corrections log and the monthly public line.
- Vote reporting
- The standard that every vote carries for, against, withheld and the base, drafted on 17 October 2026 and still to be published.
- Appointment reporting
- Notice, effective date and acting or permanent status for every appointment.
- Rate-decision reporting
- The rate, the date and the bank's own reason, with the next meeting from the bank (note due 4 November 2026, the day the first Rate Decision Table runs).
- Figures and arithmetic
- Conversion basis, record claims, 'not published', our-arithmetic labels, and the rule on institutions whose releases disagree.
- Labels and bylines
- Analysis, Explainer and Sponsored labels; named-column bylines; the column field on every article.
- AI and the editorial system
- How the editorial system uses AI tools and how the publisher answers for the result (note due 16 November 2026), with Article 50 of the EU AI Act as the legal reference.
- Source hierarchy
- Primary before secondary, the record of first resort per market, and which language version is quoted.
Markets
The 16 markets, and what it reads in each
- Kazakhstan
- Record of first resort: the KASE notice, with the filed PDF where one exists (as for Nurbank and Transtelecom); check the Russian or Kazakh original when the English differs; the statistics bureau's register needs a sign-in, so cite the notice for identity facts.
- Uzbekistan
- Record: the Openinfo filing or the ministry notice; label any translation as ours.
- Azerbaijan
- Record: the CBAR release or legal act; where a date comes from a news agency (as the 29 October decision date does), the piece says so.
- Georgia
- Record: the NBG statement, which names its next meeting and can be cited for it.
- Türkiye
- Record: the KAP notification; quote the Turkish original when the English version is shorter; the Trade Registry Gazette could not be reached on 18 October, so registry facts need another primary source.
- Saudi Arabia
- Record: the Saudi Exchange announcement or the CMA decision; Arabic prevails for CMA regulations; an aggregator may supply a lead, never the citation, now that the exchange pages load.
- United Arab Emirates
- Record: the DFM or ADX disclosure. The federal regulator is the Capital Market Authority from 1 January 2026; pieces use the old name, Securities and Commodities Authority, only for earlier acts.
- Qatar
- Record: the QSE disclosure or the issuer's release; the Qatar News Agency is cited only as secondary.
- Kuwait
- Record: the Boursa Kuwait disclosure document.
- Oman
- Record: the MSX disclosure or the issuer's release; the regulator's and central bank's sites failed certificate checks on 18 October.
- Egypt
- Record: the FRA release or the CBE statement; FRA addresses carry Arabic slugs, so each link is opened once before publication.
- Poland
- Record: the ESPI or EBI report; the court register returned a maintenance page on 18 October.
- Hungary
- Record: the filing in the MNB storage; MNB minutes exist in Hungarian and English, and the English is quoted.
- Czech Republic
- Record: the CNB statement or the issuer's inside-information notice; the governance code exists only in Czech, so any English rendering is labelled as our translation.
- Romania
- Record: the BVB current report; the trade register could not be reached on 18 October.
- Ukraine
- Record: the NBU release or the ministry notice; the state register could not be reached on 18 October.
What it checks before publishing
- The record that prompted a standard, linked.
- That the rule can be tested in one sentence against any piece.
- Every surface an error reached: headline, dek, body, table, social captions and newsletter.
- The corrections log against the article notes, every month.
- That a correction request was answered within two working days.
- That bylines, column pages and disclosure lines match the sitekit.
The standard every piece meets
- The record that prompted the note, linked.
- The rule in one sentence a reader can check against any piece.
- The date from which the rule applies.
- For a correction: the wrong and the right wording, verbatim, and every surface the error reached.
- The editorial system's checks against the newsroom's standards recorded before publication.
- The address for corrections.
Regular features
- Corrections this month: one line with the count and links, on the first working day of the month.
- How we report: a short series, one note per kind of story (votes, appointments, rate decisions, figures, AI use).
How it writes
- Standards note: When a rule is set or changed
- Correction: As needed
When the data is thin
When a reader disputes a fact and the record is unclear, Company Seal publishes nothing until the error is established; the piece stays up with what the record shows. When an error is established, the correction goes on the article with the date, and the log records it. When a standard proves unworkable, a new dated note replaces it; the old one stays on the record.
When official figures disagree
It does not take on outside claims; that is the other columns' work. If a company disputes a report, Company Seal states what the record shows and what, if anything, was corrected, without commentary.
Left to other columns
- Minute Book
Any news, including news that a correction concerns
Sets the vote, appointment and rate-decision standards Minute Book applies; receives its corrections and complaints. Company Seal never reports the news itself, even when a correction concerns a decision.
- Counting House
Market data and reconciliations
Sets the arithmetic standards: conversion basis, record claims, 'not published', our-arithmetic labels. Receives its corrections. Company Seal publishes counts only of its own corrections and standards, never market data.
- Small Print
Analysis of external rules for readers
Sets the label standard (Analysis, Explainer) and the quotation rule Small Print follows; receives its corrections. Company Seal explains Boards and Capital's rules, never external regulation for readers.
Company Seal never takes on: arguing with a company; advertisers; publishing anything the editorial system has not checked against the newsroom's standards.
Terms used in this column
The 29 terms, defined
- Correction
- A dated note at the foot of an article fixing a material error, quoting the wrong and the right wording.
- Material error
- An error of fact, figure, name, date, title or attribution; always corrected with a note.
- Typo
- A spelling or formatting slip that changes no fact; fixed without a note.
- Clarification
- Not a category at Boards and Capital: an error of fact is corrected, otherwise the piece stands.
- Corrections log
- The internal record of every correction, summarised publicly once a month.
- Standards note
- A dated note that sets a reporting rule a reader can test against any piece.
- Record of first resort
- The primary document a fact is taken from: the notice, the statement, the filing.
- Primary source
- A filing, release, regulator, ministry, statistics office, central bank, court or multilateral document.
- Secondary source
- A news outlet or aggregator; its figures are attributed to it by name.
- Attribution
- Naming the source of each figure where it first appears.
- Our arithmetic
- A figure the newsroom calculated, labelled as such and shown with its inputs.
- Not published
- The words used when a document omits a figure; no estimate replaces it.
- Base
- The denominator of a percentage; a vote percentage without its base is not printed.
- Votes cast and voting rights
- The two bases a vote story gives: the share of votes cast, and the share of voting rights that took part.
- Acting and permanent
- The status printed with every appointment.
- Effective date
- When a decision takes effect, printed with every appointment and rule.
- Label
- Analysis, Explainer or Sponsored, shown in the kicker and on the page.
- Sponsored
- Content paid for by an advertiser, labelled, excluded from editorial rankings and never written by the Newsdesk.
- Named column
- A byline that is a title of the newsroom, not a person, in the tradition of Lex and Bagehot.
- Disclosure line
- The sentence on each column page saying the column is written by the editorial system under the publisher's responsibility.
- Editorial system
- The newsroom's AI-assisted process that researches, drafts and checks every piece; the publisher is accountable for what it publishes.
- Editorial responsibility
- The publisher's accountability for everything published; one of the conditions in Article 50(4) of the EU AI Act for the text exemption, which Boards and Capital does not rely on.
- Human review or editorial control
- The process Article 50(4) names as a condition of that exemption; Boards and Capital does not rely on the exemption and discloses its AI use.
- Article 50
- The EU AI Act's transparency article, applicable from 2 August 2026 under Article 113.
- Trust indicators
- The Trust Project's published list of signals, such as a corrections policy and labels.
- Peg
- The dated event or document a piece is built on.
- Freshness rule
- A piece whose peg is more than four weeks old by its slot needs a since-then line or is held.
- Since-then line
- A sentence adding what has happened between the peg and publication.
- Two working days
- The time within which correction requests are answered.
Notes by Company Seal
All columnsHow we report: every appointment carries its notice, status and effective date
The standard starts with the first Appointments Register on 20 October; where a notice is silent on the date, the status or a successor, the piece says so.
Who writes and edits Boards and Capital
An AI editorial system writes and checks each piece; our editor, Linda Mile, is an avatar, not a person; the publisher is responsible for what we publish.
