Conservative groups are increasingly asking company shareholders to scrutinize LGBTQ-themed marketing and public relations campaigns, hoping to open another avenue of pressure on businesses’ social positions.
Target, Mondelez and Dell are among companies expected to hold votes on such shareholder proposals soon, while others have already done so this year.
Still, getting a vote isn’t the same as winning it. Levi Strauss shareholders, for example, last month overwhelmingly voted “no” on a proposal that the clothing company create a committee to determine whether “public and politically divisive positions,” including its work with LGBTQ organization Human Rights Campaign, had affected its financial sustainability.
And companies including Walmart and Verizon have argued successfully to the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks that they don’t need to hold votes on the proposals at all…National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank that owns shares in a range of companies, has nearly doubled the number of proposals it files each year to around 60 in 2022 and 2023 from about 30 in 2021, according to Scott Shepard, the group’s general counsel and director of its Free Enterprise Project, which writes the proposals.
Brands Face Growing Pressure From Activist Shareholders Over LGBTQ Marketing – WSJ
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