Don’t believe the conservative hype. The campaign against sustainable investing is a scheme propped up by special interest groups, shady billionaires, and the fossil fuel industry. It has no future among investors, fund managers or anyone who wants to protect their money from foreseeable risks.
Read moreNAM's SEC Lawsuit Undermines Shareholder Rights
In May 2023, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) successfully filed a motion to intervene in a federal case brought by the anti-ESG group the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), challenging a shareholder resolution No Action determination. The NAM motion opened a broader challenge to the SEC’s authority to provide guidance regarding whether shareholder resolutions could be allowed on a company’s proxy for a vote, claiming that this process violates principles of corporate First Amendment rights enshrined in the Citizens United ruling.
Read morePrudent Climate Action by Shareholders is Legal and Necessary Despite Anti-ESG Rhetoric
Over the past decade, the investor community has worked with hundreds of companies, regulators and investment organizations to address climate change. Why? Because cutting emissions is a prudent and effective business management strategy that reduces a host of risks
Read moreSCOTUS Decision Could Scuttle Regulatory Agencies and Shareholder Rights
The modern administrative system was set up in recognition of the needs of a technologically developed society where the lives of citizens are affected by dozens and dozens of complex areas. From air pollution, to drugs, the internet, transportation, education, chemicals, railroads, airwaves, consumer protection, and health, agencies set the rules of the road for some of the most important areas of our lives.
Read more2024 Update on Shareholder Rights Legal and Policy Developments
This year proxy and shareholder proposal rules and practice are evolving to create greater accountability and efficiency. Simultaneously, so called anti-ESG efforts are pressing a more disruptive policy agenda that could eviscerate the rights of share owners to file and vote on environmental and social proposals.
Read moreESG Triggers the Right
Republican politicians are placing ESG on the list of grievances and conspiracies they serve up to their base as they try to turn ESG into the next critical race theory (CRT). One activist who was instrumental in convincing the Republican base that CRT is an ominous threat to their existence is heavily involved in the anti-ESG effort.
Read moreThe Path to a Peaceful Settlement in the ESG Culture Wars
It is healthy to have a debate about ESG: What it is, and what it isn’t; what it can’t do, what it can do, and what it was never meant to do. The term has probably run its full life cycle, and it is time to address the underlying issues of what is being debated.
Read moreWhat the SEC's Mandatory Climate Disclosure Proposal Means for Investors and Market Protection
The adage “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” is a sound argument for measuring and assessing climate risks, which cost the world over $313 billion in 2022 alone. Investors have expressed their resounding support, including more than 600 investors who signed the 2022 Global Investor Statement urging governments to address climate risks through mandatory disclosure.
Read more2023 Update on SEC Shareholder Proposal Rules and Guidelines
Recent efforts of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Staff to create a more objective and efficient process for handling shareholder proposals have borne fruit in 2023, resulting in a 30 percent reduction in company-filed challenges to shareholder proposals. Clearer guidelines from the Staff have made it possible for shareholders to draft more defensible proposals.
Read moreESG Data Helps Assess Value, Potential Returns and Manage Investment Risk
Institutional investors have been paying attention to environmental, social and governance risk factors long before it was “ESG.” Without fanfare or agenda, these long-term investors took notice of weak governance practices that led to corruption, friction with workforces that led to strikes and factories that spewed toxins into rivers leading to lawsuits from those who lived downstream.
Read moreRepublican Efforts to Limit ESG Investing are Anti-Capitalist
There is a cohort of elected officials in the United States presently engaged in an anti-capitalist crusade against free-market principles. No, they are not socialists. They are congressional Republicans, and they are attempting to prevent financial institutions from allocating capital in accordance with investor preferences and risk management principles. This attempted crackdown is purely ideological in nature — it is an exercise in political pressure to force a gross government overreach into U.S. capital markets.
Read moreThe Anti-ESG Shareholder Proponents
Shareholder proponents who oppose most of the ideas supported by ESG investors have been around for a long time, but in the last two years they have filed many more proposals and a few new players have emerged.
Read moreNew Universal Proxy Rule Will Democratize Director Elections
In November 2021, the SEC adopted final rules that will require parties in a contested corporate director election to use universal proxy cards for shareholder meetings held after August 31, 2022. Under the new rules, both the company and any shareholder seeking to elect a slate of director candidates at a shareholder meeting will be required to use proxy cards that include the names of all director nominees presented for election at the meeting.
Read more2022 Proxy Legal Overview: ESG Proposals in Ascendance
The 2022 proxy season reflects the ascendance of support for ESG shareholder proposals, along with policy changes at the SEC that both support and undermine these proposals.
Read moreLawsuit Challenges SEC's Restrictive Shareholder Proposal Rules
In September 2020, the SEC under Chairman Jay Clayton issued amendments to Rule 14a-8 that substantially restrict shareholders’ access to the corporate proxy statement. The Clayton SEC’s actions came in the context of years of lobbying by major trade associations like the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers to limit shareholders’ ability to effectively engage with the companies they own on critical environmental, social, and governance issues.
Read moreThe Promise of Retail Shareholder Power
Voting is integral to the democratic process. During the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, it felt as though you could hardly go a day without hearing a celebrity or politician urging the public to vote.
Read moreWhat Shareholders Can Expect From a Biden SEC
With a new year, proxy season, and presidential administration, US SIF expects to see new support for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure and other actions that benefit shareholders, other investors, and society at large.
During the presidency of Donald Trump, the executive branch rolled back environmental protections and imposed constraints on investors who sought to raise concerns about ESG issues.
Read moreProposed Rules Threaten To Obstruct Pathway To Improved ESG Disclosure And Performance
The Shareholder Rights Group is a group of leading proponents of shareholder proposals that have come together in defense of shareholder proposals under rule 14a-8. After the SEC issued its November 5, 2019 proposed changes to the rule, we examined how the proposed changes would have affected recent proposals and engagements at companies with high profile corporate responsibility challenges: Boeing, Wells Fargo and Chevron.
Read moreThe Attack On Shareholder Rights
The currently pending SEC proposals to regulate proxy advisory firms and to limit shareholder proposals together represent the biggest attack on shareholder rights by the SEC since it was created in 1934.
Read moreShareholder Proposals Provide Crucial Early Warning System For Identifying Risk
For decades, the shareholder proposal process has served as a cost-effective way for corporate management and boards to gain a better understanding of shareholder concerns, particularly those of longer-term shareholders concerned about the sustainability of the companies they own.
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