2024 Proxy Vote Alerts

GHG Executive Pay Links – Board Accountability – Cigarette Waste

WELCOME TO WEEK 4 (MAY 6- May 10, 2024) OF PROXY PREVIEW’S ESG PROXY VOTE ALERTS.

  • Getting companies to take climate change seriously is the major motivation for shareholder resolutions. An upcoming resolution addresses what is arguably the least developed aspect of corporate climate action - how to incentivize executives to reduce emissions.

  • Shareholders are increasingly demanding more board accountability and a new shareholder group is focused on improving corporate governance, oversight and reporting.

  • Investors in tobacco companies are raising a new and unexpected health issue – plastics in cigarette filters.

GHG Executive Pay Links

The report Pay for Climate Performance analyzed how the 100 largest U.S. companies linked executive compensation to GHG emissions reduction. Financial incentives fell far short of the emission reductions needed to meet science-based decarbonization goals. An upcoming resolution asks Cummins — which like many companies claims compensation links to vague climate or ESG goals — to disclose its plan “to link executive compensation to 1.5-degree C-aligned greenhouse gas emissions reductions across the Company's full value chain.”

Board Accountability

A number of resolutions are directed at companies that proponents believe are clearly lagging their peers in reporting material risk. For example, Dine Brands is the only major restaurant brand whose 10-K risk disclosures did not mention climate change (the company made some limited disclosure after the resolution was filed). Meanwhile, Wendy’s self identifies animal welfare and responsible sourcing as posing high material risk, yet 94% of its eggs come from caged hens and it is the only major restaurant chain without a plan to transition to cage-free eggs. Competitors, such as McDonald’s, began switching to cage-free eggs back in 2015 and in February it announced all 2 billion eggs in its U.S. restaurants are cage-free.

Cigarette Waste

Cigarettes are responsible for a surprisingly large amount of plastic pollution. According to proponents, “Cigarette filters are a form of single-use plastics. They are the most littered item globally with 4.5 trillion discarded annually, comprising 300,000 tons of potential plastic microfibers released into the environment.” A resolution at Altria, the biggest U.S. tobacco company, asks it to assess the benefits of it supporting extended producer responsibility laws for spent tobacco filters vs. the reputational, financial and operational risk associated with filter cleanup costs.