The Responsible Investor Podcast14 Mai 2025

Mid-season proxy scorecard: Taking stock of E&S shareholder proposals in 2025

ESG shareholder proposals have come under increasing scrutiny over the past few years, with debates focusing around their alleged prescriptiveness and quality. Support for these proposals also fell sharply from the record levels reached in 2021 before stabilising last year at around 20 percent.

Last year also saw ExxonMobil sue Dutch NGO Follow This and Arjuna Capital over a climate resolution. The lawsuit ended with the case being dismissed but Arjuna Capital had to promise never to file a resolution at the oil major again.

And following the election of Donald Trump, filers predicted that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would be more likely to side with corporates, increasingly allowing them to block ESG proposals.

So with all of this in mind, how are experts feeling about what we have seen so far this proxy season? How has the SEC's approach to ESG proposals shifted in 2025 – in particular, what has been the impact of Staff Legal Bulletin 14M (SLB14M)? And of the AGMs that have happened so far, what trends are emerging?

To dig into all of this and more, RI's AGM reporter Gina Gambetta sat down with two experts in the space. First up, Lindsey Stewart, director of stewardship research and policy at Morningstar Sustainalytics. And for the second part of the episode, Gina spoke with Damion Rallis, co-founder of ESG research and analytics firm Free Float.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(39)

How does extreme heat affect soil health?

Europe's summer heatwaves have caused widespread destruction, from the Rhine river hitting record lows to wildfires across France, Italy and Spain. It is also having severe impact beneath our feet. Ma...

14 Aug 29min

Doing well by doing good? Reassessing the link between sustainability and performance

"Doing well by doing good" was an often-heard refrain at conferences throughout the early 2020s. It was even supported by influential academic studies that claimed sustainability and investment perfor...

23 Jul 49min

What's next for SFDR 2.0?

The European Union's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is one of the most important frameworks in the ESG fund space, and one of the biggest headaches. Since the European Commission sei...

21 Mai 20min

Recalibrating investor action on climate change

Have investors overstated their ability to drive climate action? Have top-down, targets-driven models of decarbonisation taken the industry down a blind alley? And if so, where should sustainability-m...

14 Mai 44min

How to improve conversations with portfolio companies

With attacks on shareholder rights on both sides of the Atlantic and widespread rollbacks, rescissions and retractions of sustainability commitments, the relationship between investors and their portf...

6 Mai 24min

Where does transition finance need to go from here?

Transition finance investment products continue to gain popularity among investors, according to recent ESG fund flows reports. Yet it is not always possible to establish whether capital is being funn...

16 Apr 31min

What drives sustainable investment at a trillion-dollar US asset manager?

Asset managers are under pressure to respond to a wide range of client demands on sustainability issues, from stewardship to decarbonisation, while grappling with a rapidly changing policy landscape. ...

25 Feb 31min

What can investors do to take action on deforestation?

In recent years, investors have increasingly been trying to work out how to best address deforestation in their portfolios. How has action evolved over the years? What has been the impact of changes ...

13 Feb 19min