Divergent Mandates? A Comparative Analysis of the 2025 Proxy Record of Major Asset Managers
Authors Sehr Khaliq is the Director of Program Evaluation, and Timothy Smith is the Senior Policy Advisor at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). This post is based on their ICCR report.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander[i] recently urged three of the city’s pension funds to drop BlackRock, Fidelity, and PanAgora because of “inadequate” climate plans. In September 2025, PFZW[ii], the 11th biggest pension fund in the world withdrew €14.5bn from BlackRock on sustainability concerns. And in August 2025, 17 Democratic state and local financial officers wrote to 17 asset managers[iii] critiquing their “retreat from long-term risk management”.
There is a growing number of asset owners looking to review their managers’ stewardship programs, and examining proxy voting records is an essential part of that review. This article seeks to offer asset owners data into how their managers’ 2025 proxy voting on director elections and environmental and social proposals compares to others in the industry.
Proxy voting is one of the most powerful tools an investor has to influence corporate behavior. The proxy voting data of the largest asset managers offers useful insights into how they exercise their oversight of corporate managements’ decision-making, reveals how they align their recognition of material risk with their asset owner clients and how they address significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks. Often times asset owners do not have access to their managers’ proxy voting data in ways that allow them to compare their managers’ voting record to that of other firms in the market – this article seeks to address that gap.
A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY
The data – provided by Canbury Insights[iv] – is drawn from asset manager NP-X filings for the July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, period that are submitted to the SEC annually by the end of August. Data shown is for all United States company holdings that had votes in that period (number of votes will vary based on the manager’s portfolio). Vote categories are asset manager-reported SEC categories, adjusted for consistency across managers and includes votes on both management and shareholder proposals. The data aggregates voting across an asset manager’s mutual funds and ETFs. Note that Geode Capital is based on Fidelity’s index fund. Where there was split voting, it is counted as the majority share, i.e. 51 votes For and 49 votes Against is counted as For. Percentages may not sum due to rounding.
DIRECTOR ELECTION VOTES 2025
Voting on director election is an investor’s most powerful tool for holding boards accountable. This applies for financial performance and oversight and when companies fail to respond to engagements on critical policies and performance related to climate, human rights, and racial justice. In our sample, Capital Group had the highest support for director elections followed by JPMorgan, Vanguard and Geode Capital, all of whom exercised their vote against directors in less than 5% of the director votes cast in 2025. It’s also worth noting the abstentions in the data below e.g. BlackRock abstained on 2.6% of the 20,495 director elections it voted on – meaning the firm abstained 532 times.
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Read the full article on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.
