ESG issues impacting shareholder meetings (2023)
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Bloomberg Law reports that ESG and ESG-related matters are playing a significant role in this year’s shareholder meeting season. The report says shareholders (and shareholder groups) are developing proxy proposals that support and oppose ESG political issues and certain types of political spending:
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Annual meetings kicked off with a bang this year as companies and their executives confronted increasingly thorny questions from both liberal and conservative stakeholders over a wide range of environmental, social, and governance topics including diversity, abortion, and climate change. Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger dove into the political debate at the company’s annual meeting last week, calling Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ pushback of the entertainment giant’s support for LGBTQ rights as “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.” Royal Bank of Canada found itself on the defensive at its annual meeting two days later, as the bank faced a volley of questions from angry proxy holders about its fossil fuel investments and the impact of its business practices on Indigenous people and people of color. Political friction at shareholder meetings is not new, but appears to be “coming back into vogue,” said David Webber, a corporate law professor at Boston University. Webber noted that there’s a long history of confrontational debates at shareholder meetings including over gay rights and segregation in previous decades. “I think we’re definitely seeing a new wave of it now,” he said…. Companies including Eli Lilly and Co and Coca-Cola Co. are among those that face politically sensitive shareholder proposals on abortion and political spending at upcoming annual meetings. Home Depot Inc. faces two diversity-related proposals this year while annual meetings at Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co will see multiple shareholder proposals on climate change impacts from lending and investment activities. Conservatives, who historically are less active in shareholder campaigns, hope to sway corporate agendas too. One shareholder has even put forth a proxy proposal that calls on Home Depot’s management to make a commitment to avoid supporting or taking a public position on “any controversial social or political issues.”… The volume of conservative shareholder proposals has risen in recent years, a new trend in the predominantly liberal shareholder activism space. These proposals typically don’t receive much investor support. But proposals opposing environmental, social and governance policies rose 60% since last year, according to the Proxy Preview 2023 report from March.[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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