As Citizens Protest 3M meeting, Investors Challenge Company Leaders on Political Spending
May 8, 2012 Contact: Mary Boyle – Common Cause (202) 736-5770 MINNEAPOLIS – Institutional shareholders and citizen activists challenged Minneapolis-based 3M Corp’s, political spending on Tuesday, urging the company to end its political giving and disclose its expenditures on lobbying. As investor representatives inside 3M’s annual shareholders’ meeting spoke in favor of two political spending measures on the company’s proxy, activists outside rallied in support of political spending reform at the manufacturing giant. “It’s time for 3M corporate leadership to stop using our company’s general treasury money as a political slush fund. There needs to be accountability,” said Mike Dean, …
Investment News: OWS Revival Seen as Boon for Socially Conscious Set
Investment News, a publication of Crain Communications, recently ran a front page article about the continuing reverberations of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The story referenced Matt Patsky’s presentation at the Investment Management Consultants Association’s annual conference in Washington, DC. In that presentation, Matt pointed out that last year in the United States; the average chief executive’s compensation was 380 times that of the average worker at that company. By comparison, the average chief executive in Germany makes 12 times as much as the average worker. “Occupy Wall Street raised a lot of issues that helped us in terms …
Huffington Post: Bank of America Targeted By Protesters and Investors
Prior to Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting, The Huffington Post has been reporting on Trillium’s shareholder resolution that calls on the company to adopt a policy prohibiting the use of corporate funds for any political election or campaign. “In recent years, significant percentages of shareholders at some large companies have voted to require their firms to provide increased disclosure about the extent of their political donations, although none of these resolutions have passed to date. And Trillium views its more aggressive proposal to get BofA to end all political spending as intimately connected with a campaign pressuring the SEC …
Private Wealth Magazine: Trillium Brings Impact Investing To Clients
In their most recent issue, Private Wealth published a profile of Trillium’s Community Impact Investing portfolio. “For nearly 30 years, Trillium Asset Management, a leader in sustainable and responsible investing, has been helping clients invest directly in communities to create social impact in exchange for modest financial returns. ‘The money that our clients have placed in community investments instruments has provided capital to non-profit organizations that have created and saved tens of thousands of jobs and homes in the communities they serve’, says Randy Rice, Trillium’s Community Investments Manager and a senior portfolio associate in its Boston office.” You can …
Newsweek Columnist: Getting Money Out of Politics is Good for Business
Rob Cox, U.S. editor for Reuters Breakingviews, highlights Trillium’s advocacy work on corporate political spending in his recent Newsweek column. Cox writes “[I]t will be up to citizen shareholders to blunt the impact of Citizens United. They can start on Tuesday in St. Paul and Wednesday in Charlotte when the shareholders of 3M and BofA, respectively, gather. They’ll be voting on proposals submitted by Trillium Asset Management of Boston to ‘request that the board of directors adopt a policy prohibiting the use of corporate funds for any political election or campaign.’” You can read the entire column here. …
AT&T Shareholder Vote on Network Neutrality Surpasses Critical Threshold
For Immediate Release: Shares worth more than $11.4 billion voted in favor; Similar votes upcoming at Verizon and Sprint April 27, 2012: A shareholder proposal calling upon AT&T Inc. (NYSE – T) to publicly commit to network neutrality principles on its wireless networks attracted important support in initial voting results released today at the company’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The proposal, which was voted on for the first time this year, attracted at least 5.9% of the votes cast in this year’s proxy vote at AT&T, according to preliminary results released by the company. That percentage could climb …
Trillium's Environmental Advocacy is Noted in Condé Nast Traveler's Profile of Bristol Bay, Alaska
In Condé Nast Traveler’s in-depth article entitled The War over Alaska’s Soul, Alex Prud’homme writes, “Virtually untouched, Alaska’s Bristol Bay is one of America’s last great wild places. Now, a proposed gargantuan multibillion-dollar mine promises to provide an economic lifeline for locals, but environmentalists warn that it could destroy one of the world’s richest salmon fisheries and imperil the very future of our planet.” “In 2011, a group of influential investors led by Trillium Asset Management—whose members represent $170 billion in assets and own 13 million shares of Anglo American stock—grew alarmed by Pebble and urged the EPA to assess …
Tessa Tennant, Sustainable Investing Pioneer on Several Continents, Wins Annual Joan Bavaria Award
Tessa Tennant, President and co-founder of The Ice Organisation, has been awarded the fourth-annual Joan Bavaria Award for Building Sustainability into the Capital Markets. The announcement was made at Tuesday’s opening reception of the Ceres annual conference, which runs April 25-26 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving to win this year’s Bavaria Award,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres. “Tessa is an inspirational leader who has worked tirelessly for more than 20 years integrating environmental and social concerns into investing and business decisions. She has taken Joan Bavaria’s original vision …
Trillium Submits Comments to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Regarding Payday Lending
In January 2012, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) convened a first-ever field hearing to gather information and input on the payday lending market. With the establishment of the CFPB, a federal agency for the first time can supervise not only bank payday lenders but also all nonbank payday lenders. The initial hearing coincided with the publication of the Bureau’s Short-Term, Small-Dollar Lending Procedures, an internal document that CFPB examiners will use to make sure payday lenders, banks and nonbanks alike, are following federal consumer financial laws. After the hearing, the CFPB invited the public to review the hearing transcript …
Trillium Successfully Engages Intel on Web-Filtering Software
Trillium Asset Management, LLC is pleased to report that Intel’s subsidiary, McAfee, announced that it would not participate in the Pakistani request for proposals to develop a nationwide censorship firewall. The use of McAfee’s SmartFilter product by repressive countries to suppress speech has been of great concern to us for the past year. Trillium has been engaging Intel on these issues since April of 2011. We believe that taking this important step reduces the company’s risk profile and demonstrates respect for human rights impacts. Trillium continues to engage Intel on human rights issues and we look forward to continuing this …
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