If you look to institutional investor action on sustainability/ESG/climate proposals as an indicator of risk or value to your company, you may want to re-calibrate. Net Zero Investor reported:
“Shareholder support for ESG and climate resolutions has dropped to a new low during the 2024 AGM season, a trend primarily driven by voting patterns among the world’s largest US-based managers, according to ShareAction’s latest Voting Matters report, which analyses voting patterns across the largest 70 managers worldwide…
The world’s four largest asset managers—BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity—generally rank as major shareholders across listed markets in the US and Europe. However, amid growing political backlash in the US, their support for environmental resolutions fell even further. BlackRock only supported 4% of environmental resolutions in 2024, compared to nearly 30% in 2021, whilst Vanguard’s support dropped to 0%, having backed only one out of 279 resolutions.”
At first blush, this sounds like the company is backing away from supporting ESG/sustainability – but that may not be accurate:
“BlackRock’s voting decisions, are based on the long-term financial interests of our clients. For the 2024 proxy year, we found that most environmental and social shareholder proposals were overreaching, lacked economic merit, or were unlikely to promote long-term shareholder value” according to a BlackRock spokesman.
Not all shareholder proposals are created equal, and some are simply not worth investor support.
Members can learn more about shareholder proposals here.
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