Vanguard joins BlackRock in reducing support for ESG shareholder proposals (2023)
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
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As this newsletter noted last week, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager (measured by assets under management), reduced its support for pro-ESG proxy proposals during the past shareholder season. Fox Business reported on August 29 that Vanguard—the second largest asset manager in the world and the largest manager of passive funds—did the same:
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The Vanguard Group says it has only approved 2% of the environmental and social resolutions brought by shareholders in 2023, down from 12% last year, joining BlackRock in rejecting a significant number of climate and social items amid pushback against the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement previously promoted by the investment titans. Vanguard reported in its Vanguard Investment Stewardship brief for the U.S. region released Tuesday that it received a greater number of environmental and social proposals this proxy season, with shareholders bringing 359 of such resolutions compared to 290 in 2022. The mutual fund giant said it saw a 50% increase in proposals related to environmental matters alone, and the most common subject was "target-setting for greenhouse gas emissions." "Across all sectors in the U.S., we saw companies receive shareholder proposals addressing social topics such as racial equity, reproductive rights, and pay gaps," the company wrote in its report, adding it also received "several notable proposals" in the consumer sector "concerning unionization and worker safety." Vanguard said it "evaluated each one case by case on its merits and in the context of the specific company," and said the decline in supporting such measures was "largely attributed to the volume and nature of the proposals" as well as improvements in company disclosures that made many resolutions unnecessary. Vanguard's report comes the week after BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, reported in its 2023 Investment Stewardship report that it turned down 742 of the record 813 proposals it voted on and 373, or 93%, of the social and climate proposals it faced.[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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