Shareholder Advocates Shatter Records (A)

The Christian Science Monitor reported this week that “Motivated to be heard in the post-Enron age, shareholders are flexing their muscles, demanding responsible policies and practices in unprecedented ways.” The Monitor also noted, “The chief barometers of shareholder activism indicate the movement has reached new heights since the wave of corporate scandals began in 2002.”
As the spring annual meeting season winds down, that certainly seems to be the case. So far this year, investors have filed a record-setting 1,147 resolutions with companies. Three-hundred and forty of those resolutions focused on social and environmental issues, a 50 percent increase from last year and another new record. Part of the surge in these resolutions comes from two new campaigns calling on companies to disclose their political contributions and their strategies to assess and address risks posed by global warming. Trillium Asset Management filed resolutions in support of both these campaigns, and the climate change resolution we co-filed at Apache Corp. was among those gaining record new levels of support. For an overview of how our proposals fared in this record-setting year, see our recent Advocacy Roundup article.