Tag: ESG shareholder proposals
More prescriptive proposals, less support for 2022 proxy season
This proxy season, companies saw more shareholder proposals than in the past, a change that has been widely attributed to actions by the SEC and its Division of Corporation Finance that had the effect of making exclusion of shareholder proposals—particularly proposals related to environmental and social issues—more of a challenge for companies. As discussed in this article in the WSJ, investors are taking the opportunity to press for more changes at companies. Nevertheless, the prescriptive nature of many of the proposals, especially climate-related proposals, has prompted many shareholders, including major asset managers, to vote against these proposals. Will next season reflect lessons learned by shareholder proponents from this proxy season?
Blackrock to permit some clients to vote—what will be the impact?
According to the Financial Times, “[p]ension funds and retail investors have complained for years over their lack of ability to vote at annual meetings when using an asset manager.” Last week, BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the galaxy with $9.5 trillion under management, announced that, beginning in 2022, it will begin to “expand the opportunity for clients to participate in proxy voting decisions.” BlackRock said that it has been developing this capability in response “to a growing interest in investment stewardship from our clients,” enabling clients “to have a greater say in proxy voting, if that is important to [them].” BlackRock will make the opportunity available initially to institutional clients invested in index strategies—almost $2 trillion of index equity assets in which over 60 million people invest across the globe. It is also looking at expanding “proxy voting choice to even more investors, including those invested in ETFs, index mutual funds and other products.” Will this be a good thing?
BlackRock flexes its muscles during the 2020-21 proxy period
Although BlackRock, which manages assets valued at over $9 trillion, and its CEO, Laurence Fink, have long played an outsized role in promoting corporate sustainability and social responsibility, BlackRock has also long been a target for protests by activists. As reported by Bloomberg, “[e]nvironmental advocates in cities including New York, Miami, San Francisco, London and Zurich targeted BlackRock for a wave of protests in mid-April, holding up images of giant eyeballs to signal that ‘all eyes’ were on BlackRock’s voting decisions.” Of course, protests by climate activists outside of the company’s offices are nothing new. There’s even a global network of NGOs, social movements, grassroots groups and financial advocates called “BlackRock’s Big Problem,” which pressures BlackRock to “rapidly align [its] business practices with a climate-safe world.” Why this singular outrage at BlackRock? Perhaps because, as reflected in press reports like this one in the NYT, activists have reacted to the appearance of stark inconsistencies between the company’s advocacy positions and its proxy voting record: BlackRock has historically conducted extensive engagement with companies but, in the end, voted with management much more often than activists preferred. For example, in the first quarter of 2020, the company supported less than 10% of environmental and social shareholder proposals and opposed three environmental proposals. BlackRock has just released its Investment Stewardship Report for the 2020-2021 proxy voting year (July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021). What a difference a year makes.
BlackRock uses its voting power to support environmental and social issues
The outside pressure has been on. As reported by Bloomberg, “[e]nvironmental advocates in cities including New York, Miami, San Francisco, London and Zurich targeted BlackRock for a wave of protests in mid-April, holding up images of giant eyeballs to signal that ‘all eyes’ were on BlackRock’s voting decisions.” Of course, protests outside of the company’s offices by climate activists are nothing new. But why this pressure on BlackRock? BlackRock and its CEO, Laurence Fink, have played an outsized role in promoting corporate sustainability and social responsibility, announcing, in 2020, a number of initiatives designed to put “sustainability at the center of [BlackRock’s] investment approach.” (See this PubCo post.) Yet, BlackRock has historically conducted extensive engagement with companies and, in the end, voted with management much more often than activists preferred; for example, in the first quarter of 2020, the company supported less than 10% of environmental and social shareholder proposals and opposed three environmental proposals. As a result, as reflected in press reports like this one in the NYT, activists have reacted to the appearance of stark inconsistencies between the company’s advocacy positions and its proxy voting record. Even a group of Democratic Senators highlighted that inconsistency in this October 2020 letter, characterizing the company’s voting record on climate issues as “troubling and inconsistent.” But that impression may be about to change. In an interview with Reuters, BlackRock’s global head of investment stewardship since 2020 revealed that the company is “‘accelerating the pace of our stewardship activities; resulting in more engagement and more voting, reflecting heightened expectations, which … are just a function of the urgency of some of the issues.’” Indeed, in the first quarter of 2021, BlackRock supported 12 of 16 environmental and social shareholder proposals.
Happy Earth Day!
Climate Action 100+ reports that, last year, there were 22 climate-related weather disasters in the U.S. that “each caused more than $1 billion in damages—far and away a record. To investors, climate change poses not only physical risks of damage to assets, supply chains and infrastructure but also transitional risk if portfolio companies do not adjust rapidly enough as the economy decarbonizes and systemic risk posed to the entire economy.” According to environmental nonprofit Ceres, as of April 21, 408 businesses and investors “with a footprint” in the U.S. have signed an open letter to the President indicating their support for the administration’s commitment to climate action and for setting a new climate target to reduce emissions. The signatories collectively represent over $4 trillion in annual revenue, over $1 trillion in assets under management and employ over 7 million U.S. workers across all 50 states. The letter states that to “restore the standing of the U.S. as a global leader, we need to address the climate crisis at the pace and scale it demands. Specifically, the U.S. must adopt an emissions reduction target that will place the country on a credible pathway to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. We, therefore, call on you to adopt the ambitious and attainable target of cutting GHG emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.” As reported by the NYT and others, the President announced today that the U.S. is setting a new climate target with a goal of reducing U.S. emissions by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. The target “calls for a steep and rapid decline of fossil fuel use in virtually every sector of the American economy and marks the start of what is sure to be a bitter partisan fight over achieving it.”
What’s ahead for this proxy season?
Alliance Advisors, a proxy solicitation and corporate advisory firm, has just posted its 2021 Proxy Season Preview, a useful introduction into the major themes of this season—well worth a read. First, and most obviously, there is COVID-19 and its direct and indirect impact. The pandemic is having a significant direct impact this year—not just in necessitating recourse to virtual-only annual meetings again this season—but also in focusing the attention of investors and proxy advisors on “how well corporate leaders navigated the crisis and protected business operations, liquidity and the health and welfare of employees.” But the pandemic has also had a somewhat surprising broader indirect impact. While it was widely anticipated that the challenges of COVID-19 would overwhelm any other concerns, the impact appears to be otherwise, as the pandemic has highlighted our increasingly precarious condition, including the effects of climate change, and intensified our social and economic inequality—all issues that are front and center this season. The Preview predicts that environmental and social proposals “are likely to see stronger levels of support in view of last year’s record 21 majority votes… and more assertive investor policies on diversity, climate change and political spending.”
Resolution introduced in Senate to scrap SEC’s recent shareholder proposal amendments under the CRA
There has been a lot of speculation about the extent to which Congress would take advantage of the Congressional Review Act to dispense with some of the “midnight regulations” adopted during the prior administration. (See this PubCo post.) We may finally be getting some insight into that question. Senator Sherrod Brown has now introduced a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the SEC’s new(ish) shareholder proposal amendments, which were the subject of strong dissents from the Democratic SEC Commissioners when they were adopted in September 2020. The resolution simply provides that Congress disapproves the rule and, as a result, the rule will have no force or effect. As reported by Bloomberg, Brown stated that “[b]y raising eligibility and resubmission thresholds for shareholder proposals, the rules take away an important tool to push for better corporate governance, increase transparency, and address the gender pay gap….Congress must repeal the rule, and we need to find ways to increase shareholder participation and to make executives more accountable.” As reported by Reuters, the National Association of Manufacturers described the resolution as “heavy-handed” and stated that it “does not believe the CRA is the appropriate mechanism for review of the SEC’s rule to modernize the proxy process […] and looks forward to engaging with the SEC to defend the vital reforms included within it.” Will the resolution win the necessary support?
The Shareholder Commons offers a new approach to ESG activism
Environmental, social and governance activism continues to adopt new approaches. One of the latest is from The Shareholder Commons, a non-profit organization founded by CEO Rick Alexander—you might recognize the name from B-Lab and Morris Nichols in Delaware—that uses “shareholder activism, thought leadership, and policy advocacy to catalyze systems-first investing and create a level playing field for sustainable competition.” In essence, TSC seeks to shift the focus from the impact of a company’s activities and conduct on its own financial performance to “systemic portfolio risk,” the impact of the company’s activities and conduct on society, the environment and the wider economy as a whole, which would affect most investment portfolios. In particular, the group has helped with submission of a number of shareholder proposals that address issues in its sweet spot—influencing corporate behavior regarding social and environmental systems that affect the economy as a whole. This season, the proposals have advocated conversion to public benefit corporations (see this PubCo post), disclosure of reports on the external public health costs created by the subject company’s retail food business, studies on the external costs resulting from underwriting of multi-class equity offerings, and reports on the external social costs (e.g., inequality) created by the company’s compensation policy. Earlier this year, TSC, working with a long-term shareholder, submitted a shareholder proposal to Yum! Brands, asking the company to disclose a study on “the external environmental and public health costs created by the use of antibiotics in the supply chain of [the] company… and the manner in which such costs affect the vast majority of its shareholders who rely on a healthy stock market.” TSC has just announced that it has withdrawn its proposal because Yum! has agreed to “provide comprehensive reporting on the systemic effects of the use of antibiotics in its supply chain by the end of 2021.”
SEC adopts amendments to the shareholder proposal rules (UPDATED)
[This post revises and updates my earlier post primarily to reflect the contents of the adopting release.]
At an open meeting last week, the SEC voted (once again, three to two) to adopt highly controversial amendments to the requirements for submission of shareholder proposals in Rule 14a-8. According to the adopting release, the final amendments are intended to “modernize and enhance the efficiency and integrity of the shareholder-proposal process for the benefit of all shareholders.” The final amendments modify the eligibility criteria for submission of proposals, as well as the resubmission thresholds; provide that a person may submit only one proposal per meeting, whether as a shareholder or acting as a representative; prohibit aggregation of holdings for purposes of satisfying the ownership thresholds; facilitate engagement with the proponent; and update other procedural requirements. Notably, the submission threshold has not been amended since 1998, and the resubmission threshold since 1954. The rulemaking generated an energetic—some might say heated—discussion among the Commissioners in the course of the long meeting, as well as substantial pushback through the public comment process, discussed in more detail in this PubCo post and this PubCo post.
Proposed amendments to shareholder proposal rules—bruised but unbowed?
The SEC may have postponed until next week the open meeting originally scheduled for yesterday to consider adoption of revisions to the shareholder proposal rules, but Reuters has the inside scoop on the outcome of at least one controversial provision: according to Reuters, say farewell to the “momentum” provision. The expected deletion of the provision, Reuters observed, “marks a critical reprieve for supporters of social and environmental motions, which can take years on the ballot to gain traction.” Reuters reports that investors have continued to press the SEC in letters and meetings with SEC staff, hoping to put the kibosh on the proposed amendments altogether. They appear to be having some impact. Will the SEC move ahead in the face of this strong opposition?
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