Majority Action is pleased to share with you: Climate in the Boardroom: How Asset Manager Voting Shaped Corporate Climate Action in 2022, which reveals the growing divide between leading asset managers that exercised their strongest mechanisms for director accountability for corporate climate performance, and the four largest asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, and State Street Global Advisors — that failed to do so.
In addition to this 2022 asset manager proxy voting analysis, Majority Action is also releasing its 2023 Proxy Voting Guide for a 1.5ºC World for investors. The list identifies climate-critical companies at which votes against directors are warranted for failing to align their emissions targets, capital expenditures, and policy influence with established pathways to limit warming to 1.5ºC.
Key findings of our report:
Overall, large asset managers’ support for directors at climate-critical companies remains stubbornly high.
The gap between the leading asset managers – those with the lowest support for management-sponsored directors at climate-critical companies in 2022 – and the majority of large asset managers continued to grow, further polarizing the group.
The Big Four asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity – have remained strong supporters of the status quo at climate-critical companies.
Most of the largest asset managers have acknowledged that climate oversight and accountability firmly rests with the board of directors.
Despite this recognition of the need for director accountability for corporate climate performance, most asset manager proxy voting policies still set expectations for climate-critical companies that are so low as to rarely trigger a vote against a director for failures of climate oversight.
