Investor activists need to sharpen their nous to get climate proposal buy-ins

THIS year’s proxy season for US-listed companies might have drawn a record number of climate-related shareholder proposals, but they were mostly impotent – total shareholder support for environmental and social proposals fell to 27 per cent, from 36 per cent in the last season.

The world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, single-handedly dialled back its support by nearly half, voting in favour of just 24 per cent of them this year, versus 43 per cent last year.

Granted, there has been some backtracking as the war in Ukraine forces countries to wean themselves off Russian oil. But the quality of proposals put forward has a part to play as well.