Brunel to vote against Exxon’s board
Brunel Pension Partnership has announced that it will vote against all all management resolutions at the forthcoming Exxon AGM in response to the oil firm's legal threats against shareholders
The £35bn pool for ten UK local government funds has confirmed its opposition to the re-election of directors and the approval of executive compensation at this year’s AGM on 29 May.
Exxon had announced at the beginning of this year that it was taking shareholders, Follow This and Arjuna Capital to court for filing a resolution calling for more ambitious climate targets. Despite the shareholders retracting their resolution, the oil giant persisted with the case.
Last week, in response, the $26bn Wespath Benefits and Investments (Wespath) fund has filed a proxy exempt solicitation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), calling on shareholders to oppose the re-election of the board, as first reported by Net Zero Investor.
Marcie Frost, CEO of CalPERS, has also spoken out against the Exxon lawsuit, accusing the oil firm of directly attacking shareholder rights.
Having said that, CalPERS did not disclose its voting intentions for the upcoming AGM.
UK pool Brunel has already heeded Wespath’s call. “Exxon maintains that Arjuna Capital and Follow This were “activists masquerading as shareholders”. This assertion ignores the underlying tenet that shareholders (in the same share class) should be treated equally, and therefore carry the same rights. It also ignores the role of organisations, such as Follow This, to support a larger group of investors to communicate areas of shared concern to the management of large companies such as Exxon” a statement by Brunel read.
“Whilst we accept Exxon’s right, as a publicly listed company, to challenge the resolution both through SEC channels and through the AGM process itself, we believe litigating against the proponents is wholly inappropriate, and is a significant threat to shareholder rights. It needs to be challenged” Brunel added.
The LGPS pool, which manages the assets of Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire local government pension funds said it only holds shares in Exxon through index-tracking products.
It is now using the support of its index-tracking fund provider to undertake pass-through voting on those shares where Brunel is the beneficial owner.
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