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Environmental and Political Spending Resolutions Lead the Way 
With more than 350 sharehold resolutions filed with companies around the world, 2011 has proven to be as active a proxy season as any in recent memory.
As the chart to the right demonstrates, more than half of all proposals filed in 2011 fall into either environmental or political spending categories, a consistent trend in recent years.
Environmental Proposals
Many of the environmental proposals focus on asking companies to adopt goals to cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG), or manage natural resources more effectively.
A couple prominent northwest companies are featured in this category including:
- Amazon.com - asked to report on their climate change assessment.
- Starbucks - asked to adopt a recycling strategy with goals.
High impact sectors such as oil and gas, construction and real estate, and utilities all were the subject of similar resolutions asking companies to adopt quantitative goals for reducing the GHG associated with their products and operations. ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, AMB Property, Berkshire Hathaway, and First Energy are just a few of the many companies facing resolutions in this category.
Political Spending
The US Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision in January 2010 increased focus on a proxy resolution category that was already receiving significant attention from sustainable and responsible investors. With corporations now effectively having free reign to fund political broadcasts in political campaigns, increased disclosure and transparency on political spending has become an even more important issue.
The Center for Political Accountability has filed its standard spending disclosure proposal with 45 different companies so far this year. The resolution requests semi-annual reports on the following:
- Policies and procedures for political contributions and expenditures (both direct and indirect) made with corporate funds.
- Monetary and non-monetary contributions and expenditures (direct and indirect) used to participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office, and used in any attempt to influence the general public, or segments thereof, with respect to elections or referenda. The report shall include:
- An accounting through an itemized report that includes the identity of the recipient as well as the amount paid to each recipient of the Company's funds that are used for political contributions or expenditures as described above; and
- The title(s) of the person(s) in the Company who participate in making the decisions to make the political contribution or expenditure.
Five of the proposals are resubmissions from 2010 that received substantial support - at Charles Schwab (33.2%) Regions Financial (33.4%) Sprint Nextel (41.2%), DTE Energy (31.6%), Coventry Health Care (46%) and WellCare Health Plans (23.3).
Some of the other companies receiving similar politcal spending resolutions include: Comcast, ConocoPhillips, Eastman Kodak, Goldman Sachs, Haliburton, JPMorgan Chase, Massey Energy, and Pfizer.
Stay tuned to future editions of SRI in the News where we will be sure to cover the results of the 2011 proxy voting season.
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