'Tis the season to be socially responsive

It's proxy season again. Many, many companies around the world will soon be sending out the invitations to the annual meeting, inviting shareholders to vote on new directors and whatever other resolutions have made it to the agenda. In the US, where a large industry has developed around proxy voting, it has slowly become easier for shareholders to get companies to include resolutions that management of the company doesn't like. So the proxy season becomes a contest of wills, where even a heavy defeat is hailed as progress for shareholder rights. Among those keeping score is the non-profit organisation called As You Sow, a Biblical allusion that concludes: "so you reap", working on behalf of fund management companies with a strong orientation to social activism, environmental affairs and similar issues. As You Sow's preview of the proxy season this year expects these issues to dominate the proxy season. Last year, it says, nearly a fifth of all investors voted supported calls for more disclosure and action on social and environmental issues. This year, some 290 resolutions have been filed on such issues, out of a total of 340 shareholder resolutions filed to date. More than 130 of them have environmental themes at their centre.

The preview report from ISS Governance Services, one of the large proxy voting services, draws similar conclusions, but with a slightly different spin. This year's season sees a dearth in resolutions concerning political campaign contributions. One year after the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, there's no point in beating that drum again.

Source documents: The As You Sow report is a 72-page pdf file. The ISS social preview is a 30-page pdf.