BlackRock trims help for some ESG resolutions in AGM season By Reuters

By Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) – BlackRock (NYSE:), the world’s largest asset supervisor, minimize its help for shareholder proposals linked to environmental and social points in the latest annual common assembly season, backing simply 4%, a report on its international voting document confirmed.

Regardless of the variety of environmental- and social-related proposals growing year-on-year to 493 from 455, BlackRock stated most had been rejected for a lot the identical causes as in earlier years. In 2023 it had supported 6.7% of such proposals.

“In our evaluation, the vast majority of these (proposals) have been over-reaching, lacked financial benefit, or sought outcomes that have been unlikely to advertise long-term shareholder worth,” it stated within the report on Wednesday.

“A major proportion have been targeted on enterprise dangers that firms already had processes in place to handle, making them redundant.”

Forward of the season, BlackRock had stated it could push boards on their monetary resilience.

Additionally driving the quantity decrease have been the rising variety of resolutions geared toward forcing firms to roll again their plans to handle sustainability dangers, together with retooling their operations to be according to international local weather targets.

BlackRock stated it didn’t help any of the 88 proposals that fell into this class.

In whole this 12 months it supported 20 proposals. Of them, 4 have been associated to local weather and pure capital, regarding disclosures at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:), Denny’s (NASDAQ:) Company, Jack within the Field (NASDAQ:) and Wingstop (NASDAQ:).

Extra broadly, BlackRock’s help for shareholder resolutions elevated to 11% from 9% – or 99 out of 867 in opposition to 71 out of 811 within the prior 12 months – pushed by the agency’s backing for extra governance-related resolutions.

“The proposals we supported sought to boost minority shareholders’ rights, for instance, by introducing easy majority voting. Market help for governance proposals additionally elevated relative to final 12 months,” it stated.

Throughout the market, total help for ESG proposals was flat at 23%, business tracker Morningstar stated, whereas help for environmental and social resolutions fell to 16% from 19%.

Shareholder resolutions apart, BlackRock stated it voted on greater than 169,200 proposals globally, backing administration’s place 88% of the time, according to earlier years.

It additionally backed the election of board administrators 90% of the time, though it declined to help 128 proposals at 104 firms due to considerations about insufficient disclosure or efficient board oversight of climate-related dangers.