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Season 3 Episode 20:
Vote like an owner with Sonia Hierzig

Our viewpoint

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This week we’re talking about something that often goes underappreciated – voting. Voting by asset managers, on behalf of their asset owner clients at company Annual General Meetings (AGMs). We’re talking to the author of an influential research piece benchmarking the voting activity of a huge chunk of the asset management industry, Shareaction’s Sonia Hierzig.

We talk through the reason for doing the research, cover the methodology used, and key findings including the big divide between US and European managers.

Links mentioned 

We discuss:

  • The background and reason behind doing the research
  • The methodology, why the specific resolutions were selected, how the data was collected, and were there any specific challenges associated with collecting this data?
  • Key findings:
    1. Manager voting activity, little changed
    2. US / Euro split of attitudes and approach
    3. Climate voting tends to focus on disclosure not strategy (which is an easier ask)
    4. Social votes receive less focus, apart from diversity and inclusions
  • Reactions to the work – including any pushbacks or questions on what is the “right” percentage of resolutions to be supporting, is it 100% or something slightly less?
  • How Sonia envisages the research being used
  • Research priorities for the next year
  • Sonia's thoughts on the implementation statements and how these could be improved

What's one thing to take-away?

Asset managers have huge potential to influence but aren’t using it enough. Think about how you can use your influence to make that happen!

The most underappreciated thing about investing

The importance of active ownership in addressing systemic risk.

Recommendations 

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Responsible Investment Survey 2022

Responsible Investment Survey 2022

Raising the bar - Expectations of investment managers are higher than ever

Read our latest RI survey, which will help you to oversee how your investment managers are implementing RI on your behalf.

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