Wingnuts Fight Back Against "Woke" Shareholder Proposals - And So Far They're 0 For 52
Conservative rabble-rouser Steve Milloy wasn’t happy last year when sustainable investment advocates scored a series of major victories at the annual meeting of Exxon Mobil Corp. A climate-focused hedge fund had won enough votes to oust a quarter of the oil major’s board. Sustainability advocates also succeeded in passing two nonbinding resolutions calling for more information about Exxon’s climate lobbying.
So Milloy, an ally of former President Donald Trump and a climate science critic, filed a proposal that called for Exxon to ban future shareholder resolutions. It’s one of a handful of proposals Milloy has submitted this year targeting the environment, social and governance, or ESG, efforts of companies he’s invested in. “There is a cancer on Exxon Mobil. That cancer is climate activist shareholders,” he said last month at the oil giant’s shareholder meeting. “We must stop Exxon Mobil-hating activists from turning the annual meeting into a climate clown show so they can take over the company.”
Milloy isn’t alone in his response to last year’s record-breaking success of sustainable investment advocates (Climatewire, Sept. 30, 2021). Conservative shareholder activists have filed twice as many proposals this year as they did in 2021, according to one count. While they haven’t done well — Milloy’s pitch at Exxon received less than 2 percent support, for example — conservative activists and business experts said resolutions with minimal shareholder backing still can have an impact on corporate leaders.
“By submitting a very conservative leaning proposal — even if they represent a tiny constituency of the company — it’s a reminder to everyone that there is a constituency of the company that feels differently,” said Mary-Hunter McDonnell, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. “That makes it more likely that the leaders will temper their responses to the more liberal-leaning asks.” Aside from Milloy, other conservative activists filing shareholder resolutions include officials from the National Center for Public Policy Research and the National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC. They are part of a broader conservative assault on ESG investing that’s being led by Republican policymakers (E&E Daily, June 7).
Together, conservative activists have placed 52 proposals on the ballot at major U.S. companies, according to an analysis from Georgeson LLC. Their proposals “are often critical of the evolving ESG landscape,” the shareholder consultancy said last week in an early review of the annual meeting season. None of the conservative proposals have come close to winning the support of a majority of shareholders.
EDIT
https://www.eenews.net/articles/conservative-shareholders-attack-climate-clown-show/