Many of us, and our investment managers, involved with shareholder company engagement (pursuing issues & topics through dialogue, resolutions, proposals, proxy voting and other methods) are already planning for 2025, having wrapped the 2024 “season” a few months back. As we’ve noted in other posts, company engagement is effective at changing companies. So how did we as a group of faith and values-based asset owners do in our 2024 engagement activity?
Our friends at ICCR (Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility) are out with their review Catalyzing Corporate Change 2024 summarizing the results of nearly 400 shareholder proposals in the just ended “proxy season”.
Overall, there was a small decline in the number of shareholder proposals versus the prior year (454 in 2023 versus 399 in 2024), and the issues mix shifted slightly with “human rights and worker rights” increasing to about 20% of all proposals, as did proposals related to lobbying and “political spending” disclosures, while climate and DEI/Racial Justice saw a slight decrease each.
There were also fewer agreements with companies: overall the number of resolutions that were withdrawn, where the company “commits to implementing the proposal’s main requests”, declined in 2024, with 84 commitments (or 57% of resolutions went to a proxy vote), compared to 122 in 2023. Though the mix of issues that saw company commitments was relatively unchanged: climate change, DEI/racial justice and human/worker rights were the top three in 2024, similar to 2023.
Of those resolutions that ended going to a proxy vote, nearly half achieved over 20% support from shareholders. ICCR notes the significance of this level as “proposals receiving over 20% shareholder support are viewed by proxy advisor Glass Lewis as meriting a response from the Board.” The issues covered by the various proposals that received this level of support are notable, as shown below:
Overall, the best performing category of issues among “new ICCR proposals” in 2024 were related to artificial intelligence, with a focus on disclosures of methods and use, and applicable ethical guidelines. An example of an AI resolution can be found here.
How did your organization fare? How did your investment managers do? If you rely on your investment managers for the bulk of your company engagement, including proxy voting, as many of us with more limited resources or smaller asset bases do, you should receive or request their 2024 proxy voting report. How does it compare to your expectations and ICCR’s reported activity?