Spanish airports operator Aena is set to become the first company in the world to give shareholders an annual vote on its effort to tackle climate change, bowing to pressure from billionaire UK hedge fund manager Chris Hohn. Sir Christopher’s TCI Fund Management, one of Aena’s largest independent shareholders, has been at loggerheads with the…
Tag: esg
Mark Carney says banks should link executive pay to Paris climate goals
Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said banks should link executive pay to climate risk management, as part of efforts to align the finance industry with Paris climate goals. \\…He said banks must “have some interim objectives and targets that are disclosed. Ideally a governance process that’s clear in terms of … specific…
Boohoo Group PLC vows to rectify failings but margins remain a question
Boohoo Group PLC (LON:BOO) has vowed to address its corporate governance responsibilities after an independent review confirmed poor working conditions and low rates of pay in its supply chain. The report found that Its senior directors “knew for a fact that there were very serious issues about the treatment of factory workers in Leicester and…
50 Years of Blaming Milton Friedman. Here’s Another Idea–Binyamin Appelbaum
The 50th anniversary of the publication of Milton Friedman’s essay advocating profit (within the law) as the primary purpose of the corporation in the New York Times was observed with reactions and responses from a range of experts. In our view, most missed the point. Unless otherwise explicitly noted and disclosed to investors in the…
Rio Tinto Executives Step Down After Shareholder Revolt over Sacred Australian Sites – The New York Times
In May, the minerals giant Rio Tinto decided to blow up the caves [containing sacred Aboriginal artifacts] to get at the riches below. But on Friday, it became clear that Australia’s most powerful export industry had met a force it could not bulldoze: the global movement for racial justice. The company announced that its chief…
Fidelity, BlackRock Reject Trump Limits on 401(k) ESG Investing – Bloomberg
The world’s largest asset managers are speaking out against a Trump administration plan that would make it more difficult for them to incorporate environmental, social and governance factors when making investment decisions, a move that could limit green investing in 401(k) plans. Fidelity Investments wrote in an 11-page letter to the U.S. Department of Labor that the…
DOL proposes rule to narrow scope of ERISA fiduciaries’ proxy voting
DOL/EBSA has followed up its outrageously unsupportable proposed rule on ESG investing (more than 95 percent of the more than 7000 comments strongly opposed) with an even more outrageously unsupportable proposed rule rolling back more than 30 years of settled law that all aspects of share ownership — the right to trade, to sue, and…
CERES Ties Governance to Environment
From Ceres, a new report called Blueprint for Responsible Policy Engagement on Climate Change. The full report is below. An excerpt: Companies that establish robust governance systems to address climate change as a systemic risk and align their direct and indirect lobbying efforts to support science-based climate policies will drive the creation of a regulatory…
