Let the Voting Begin

Proxy season is here -- meaning a wave of annual meetings, in which shareholders take mostly boilerplate votes, including naming corporate boards and approving company auditors. But every once in a while things get interesting at annual meetings, with controversial votes. And this year, Leslie Norton writes, it's likely to be more interesting than usual.  

Companies, for one, are being asked to play a broader role than ever before. Social media has put everyone under a microscope, corporate America included. And some investors have begun to join the calls for change. "An array of shareholder proposals on workplace diversity and working conditions are in play," Leslie writes, "some inspired by the pandemic and the protests following George Floyd’s death while he was in police custody."

Some of the other other issues on the agenda: climate change and more disclosure around political spending. In some cases, the threat of a proxy vote has already led to change.

So far, dozens of proposals have been withdrawn after companies agreed to act, avoiding shareholder votes. This year, “we’ve already racked up a number of victories.…In general, we’ve had more successful negotiations with companies,” says Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century Capital Management, which withdrew a resolution from JPMorgan Chase’s proxy after the bank agreed to expand its policies to help stop deforestation. Likewise, the Service Employees International Union and CtW Investment Group pulled a resolution urging BlackRock to conduct a racial-equity audit, after the firm agreed to do so.

Leslie has a preview of the votes facing prominent companies like Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, Amazon.com, and Alphabet. 

You can read her full article here.