A group of Dutch investors managing assets worth nearly 1.5 trillion euros threatened on Friday to oppose oil and gas sector executives’ pay plans if their companies failed to set climate change goals in line with the Paris Agreement on global warming. The institutional investors, including the asset management arms of insurers Aegon(AEGN.AS) and NN…
Category: activism
Quality Shareholder Initiative’s Professor Lawrence Cunningham on New SEC Restrictions on Shareholders
Prof. Lawrence Cunningham, Director of the Quality Shareholders Initiative writes about his concern that the SEC’s new disclosure requirements for activist shareholders will make constructive engagement and oversight more difficult. He does concede, though, that portions of the proposal actually make activist engagement easier. The 2022 proxy season is primed for historic levels of shareholder activism,…
Agenda – Icahn Mulling Proxy Fight at McDonald’s Over … Pigs
The longest-running and highest-profile activist of them all may be mounting a new proxy contest, the first over what might be considered an ESG issue. [Carl Icahn appears to be preparing what could be his first foray into socially conscious investing with inspiration from an unlikely source: pigs. According to the Journal, Icahn is reportedly…
Why Finance Firms Should Pay Attention to Activist Investing
Activist investing was never really an activity for ‘the people’ historically. Perhaps because ‘the people’ hadn’t yet considered how being a shareholder could be used as a form of activism. Now, we find ourselves amid a retail investor boom, and it shows no signs of slowing down. They even have a name tag for this…
Do Hedge Funds Create Value? 3 Lessons From Danone And Unilever
Hedge funds do not have to disclose to the SEC any intentions to exert control of a company if they own less than 5% of a company. These small stakes can still have huge impact, as we have seen at corporate giants like Exxon and Nestle. Even small hedge funds can have significant influence if…
Huge investor coalition urges governments to accelerate climate action | Corporate Secretary
A huge investor coalition has called on national governments to accelerate policy changes that will support investment in climate change solutions. A group of 587 investment firms with a collective $46 trillion in assets under management yesterday issued a statement urging governments to take a range of actions, from strengthening emissions targets to mandating climate…
Activision Blizzard, sued for its workplace culture, is facing investor pressure from the Strategic Organizing Center.
The Strategic Organizing Center (formerly Change to Win) is a democratic coalition of four labor unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and United Farmworkers of America (UFW). Together, SOC-affiliated unions represent more than 4 million workers. In an interview with Slate, SOC’s research director, Richard Clayton,…
Shareholder Commons: First Annual Report
“TSC is a new NGO that is catalysing a paradigm shift in responsible investment.” … In their first year of activity, they have begun to build a field of asset owners, asset managers, advisors, and civil society organisations who want a new toolkit to ensure that profits are aligned with social cohesion and environmental preservation. They…
Agenda – Investors To Back Off Say-on-Climate Proposals
What Agenda calls backing off may just be a shift in response to the forthcoming SEC rulemaking on climate disclosure. Last year CIFF, along with several supporting partners including CDP, the nonprofit formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, and ESG charity ShareAction, began a new, three-pronged initiative to push companies in the U.S. and…
Companies Agree to Support Paris-Aligned Climate Policy | ICCR
Building on the groundbreaking majority vote in support of a proposal on climate lobbying at Chevron’s 2020 annual meeting, investor members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are announcing agreements reached with five companies on similar proposals requesting a report on if and how the companies’ lobbying activities (direct and through trade associations) align…