Your Custom Text Here
Shareholders have struggled to enforce corporate director accountability. Beyond contested board elections, shareholders today have little practical, direct impact on directors.
On one important subject, director pay, at almost all U.S. companies, directors have absolute authority over their compensation.
Read moreIn today’s marketplace, companies are under increasing scrutiny regarding their public impacts—and their governance of these matters. This has serious material implications for all stakeholders.
Read moreInvestors currently get the same voting advice from the leading proxy advisory firms, whether broadly diversified or highly concentrated. A portfolio-wide focus for voting makes more sense for diversified investors and investors concerned with environmental and social issues.
Read moreCompanies increasingly are incorporating climate-related metrics into CEO pay packages. The effectiveness of CEO compensation as an accountability mechanism, however, hinges on at least three key factors.
Read moreThe arena of sustainable investment is evolving globally. For the European Union, the impact is clear: to operate in the EU, companies must elevate their sustainability game and material data disclosures.
Read moreIn the last few years, companies have begun to use non-financial metrics more often in CEO pay packages. In 2021, 52 percent of S&P 500 companies reported including ESG metrics in compensation while 69 percent said they will be included in 2022 compensation packages.than one-third, posing the significant challenge of decoupling emissions from the sector’s growth.
Read moreBoards are becoming more diverse and detailed disclosure provides a critical window into progress. Boards that are both diverse and inclusive offer multiple ways to look at strategy and risk and a lower likelihood of groupthink. Their selection process extends beyond the board’s immediate network and diverse boards connect companies to communities that represent large swaths of its customers, employees and/or business locations. For investors and also for researchers, the more specific the company’s disclosures, the easier it is to assess board composition compared to the demographics of key stakeholders and society at large.
Read moreOne hundred million Americans have invested more than $10 trillion in retirement savings that likely are not aligned with their values. Many corporations strive to reduce material risk for all stakeholders by becoming more environmentally and socially responsible. But if they do not consider climate-related financial risks, most invest employees’ hard-earned savings in oil, coal-fired utilities and agribusinesses involved in deforestation, which means employees’ savings fuel climate change.
Read moreThe definition of what it means to invest is changing. Today, investors are looking beyond their trading terminals and tackling investing risks in the real world, where value is created, as well as in the capital markets, where it is priced.
Read moreThe Shareholder Commons has filed or otherwise supported 19 shareholder proposals in 2022 that focus on systematic risks, including mis/disinformation, climate change, and antimicrobial resistance. The common thread running through these proposals is how a company’s externalized costs affect shareholders by reducing the value of other assets in their portfolios.
Read moreShareholder resolutions requesting companies disclose plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 received increased support in the 2021 proxy season. While this is a positive development, companies must do more to cut emissions in half by 2030 to meet the Paris climate treaty goals. The way to make this work is to have a direct link to executive compensation packages. If the board sets a real financial incentive then executives will make it happen.
Read moreInvestors increasingly are ready to hold board members of U.S. public companies accountable for failing to appropriately oversee their companies’ climate-related risks and opportunities.
Read moreBoard diversity is improving, but this is not the time to back down. Companies, shareholders, and the overall economy benefit when board oversight better reflects the marketplace and draws from the broadest possible talent pool.
Read moreBlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s annual letters to investees and clients are hotly anticipated, including by shareholders seeking that the company use its proxy voting practices to be more supportive of climate change proposals.
Read moreFor far too long, ESG activism has been defined by proposals designed to improve a company’s financial performance or reduce its risk profile. While “doing well by doing good” can create positive outcomes, it does not preserve systems under threat from profits achieved through externalized social and environmental costs.
Read moreAs the world’s largest social media company – and the largest source of reported child sex abuse online – Facebook’s actions have a major impact on global child safety. A resubmitted shareholder resolution seeks a report from Facebook that will assess the risk of increased child sexual exploitation that will occur if it implements a plan to offer end-to-end encryption on its platforms.
Read moreNew York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, on behalf of the New York City Retirement Systems, submitted shareholder proposals to approximately 17 S&P 500 companies for the Spring 2020 proxy season calling on their boards of directors to adopt a policy for improving board and top management diversity. The policy would require that the initial list of candidates from which new management-supported director nominees and chief executive officers (CEOs) are recruited (if from outside the company) should include qualified female and racially/ethnically diverse candidates. The policy should provide that any third-party consultant asked to furnish a list will be requested to include such candidates.
Read moreThrough its ubiquitous platforms and services, Alphabet/Google has become an influential global force that has democratized information collection and sharing, connected and empowered communities, and transformed media and entertainment. While its technologies have tremendous power and potential to benefit society, without proper oversight these same technologies and the ways that companies deploy them can cause specific human rights impacts and unintended, widespread harm.
Read moreIn a 1970 New York Times Magazine article, economist Milton Friedman said corporations exist solely to serve their shareholders and must maximize shareholder financial returns to the exclusion of all else. Moreover, he maintained, companies that did adopt "responsible" attitudes would be faced with more binding constraints than companies that did not, rendering them less competitive. This has been the dominant interpretation of capitalism for nearly 50 years.
Read moreThe power of proxy voting to transform corporate behavior is real. Through the height of the 2019 proxy voting season, shareholders had the opportunity—and responsibility—to vote on 177 shareholder resolutions addressing environmental and social issues and sustainable governance. Boston Trust Walden takes this fiduciary responsibility seriously, striving to vote on all company and shareholder proposals presented in proxy statements. Our multi-year initiative to hold asset managers we invest in accountable for thoughtfully incorporating long-term ESG considerations in their proxy voting practices remains an engagement priority.
Read more