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BlackRock’s help for shareholder proposals on environmental and social points has fallen to a fraction of its 2021 peak, it disclosed on Wednesday, whilst its help for governance-related questions rose.
Within the 12 months to the top of June, BlackRock supported simply 20 of the 493 environmental and social proposals put ahead by shareholders at annual conferences, or about 4 per cent of the full, in keeping with its annual funding stewardship report.
That compares with a excessive of 47 per cent in 2021. By final yr the determine had fallen to 7 per cent.
The decline in help comes as firms’ efforts to handle local weather change and inequality — points that have been as soon as bundled along with governance below the ESG umbrella — have grow to be politically fraught.
Conservatives have accused BlackRock and different giant asset managers of utilizing their giant holdings to pursue “woke capitalism”, whereas the left has complained that traders have didn’t push laborious sufficient for decarbonisation.
However governance-related actions searching for to guard shareholder rights and promote sturdy boards have escaped related criticism.
The $10.6tn asset supervisor mentioned that it had voted on a document 867 shareholder proposals general, however had discovered only a few of these on environmental and social points to be in the very best curiosity of its purchasers.
Lots of this yr’s proposals have been “overly prescriptive, missing financial benefit or asking firms to handle materials dangers they’re already managing”, wrote Joud Abdel Majeid, BlackRock’s international head of funding stewardship.
The variety of no votes was lifted this yr by BlackRock’s uniform opposition to 88 conservative-backed anti-ESG resolutions searching for to forestall firms from addressing such points.
The world’s largest cash supervisor voted in favour of 79 of the 374 governance proposals it thought-about, or 21 per cent, up from 11 per cent final yr. Among the many most typical have been proposals to introduce easy majority voting, reasonably than requiring a supermajority.
BlackRock’s lack of enthusiasm for environmental and social proposals contributed to low general help for such measures at many company annual conferences.
The median help for environmental and social shareholder proposals at Russell 3000 firms was 21 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively, this yr, in keeping with knowledge from ISS-Company. Solely two climate-related questions obtained majority help.
Globally, BlackRock supported 88 per cent of proposals put ahead by the businesses it invests in, together with 82 per cent of these associated to pay. It additionally backed 90 per cent of company-nominated administrators, just like its voting in earlier years.
It mentioned its primary causes for opposing administrators have been lack of independence, membership on too many boards and issues about govt compensation.