Shareholder engagement covers a host of strategies investors use to influence the policies and practices of their portfolio companies on questions of environmental and social risk. The range of engagement strategies covers proxy voting on shareholder proposals to participating in investor letters and statements to direct engagement of management via dialogues and the filing of shareholder proposals, among others.
What is implicit in this work however is an acknowledgement of investors’ responsibility through their equity ownership to help companies mitigate any negative impacts to their stakeholders including workers, suppliers, customers and the communities where they operate.
The core tactics ICCR members use in their engagements include:
- Dialogues with corporate management where one or more issues may be discussed;
- The filing of shareholder proposals that appear on the proxy statement and are voted on at the annual shareholder meeting;
- Multi-stakeholder roundtables convening industry peers to advance progress on a sector-wide issue;
- Investors will issue statements or letters to companies on specific issues of concern, and;
- Guidance to help both investors and companies mitigate specific risks.