This is why institutional investors have a duty to consider the impact that individual companies are having on the rest of their portfolios. GHG emissions that exceed a company's fair share of a Paris-aligned economy contribute to a threat that global equity markets will be rerated 30-40% downward as compared to an economy that is aligned. That should get the attention of fiduciaries charged with optimizing returns over the long term. (And of taxpayers who will have to fund shortfalls at public pension funds). We don't need more data. We need shareholder action. As You Sow Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Jake Barnett CalPERS CalSTRS #NYClimateWeek The Generation Foundation Climate Action 100+ The Sunrise Project Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) Principles for Responsible Investment
The Shareholder Commons
Civic and Social Organizations
Northampton, Massachusetts 2,233 followers
Catalyzing fundamental change in the capital markets to truly put society’s shareholders first.
About us
The Shareholder Commons is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating systemic change in the capital markets by employing shareholder engagement around sustainability guardrails to mitigate the collective action problems facing the current system.
- Website
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http://www.theshareholdercommons.com
External link for The Shareholder Commons
- Industry
- Civic and Social Organizations
- Company size
- 2-10 employees
- Headquarters
- Northampton, Massachusetts
- Type
- Nonprofit
- Founded
- 2019
Locations
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Primary
Northampton, Massachusetts, US
Employees at The Shareholder Commons
Updates
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Welcome to our first fall update of Portfolios on the Ballot (POTB), which highlights systems-first initiatives going to a vote at shareholder meetings. While there are many fewer shareholder meetings in the fall, our August POTB digest is full of updates. Read on to learn more about an important vote at Darden, a reminder about the surveys **closing soon** for ISS | Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass, Lewis & Co., and read a new model RFP we've put together for investors seeking #systemstewardship in their #proxyvoting advice. https://lnkd.in/g-TTufmN And don't forget to sign up to get news about POTB 2025's spring launch: https://lnkd.in/g6DgqUgU
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We've just filed our exempt solicitation regarding Item 7 on Darden's proxy card, a shareholder proposal asking the company to follow World Health Organization guidelines on use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals. Darden is the largest restaurant operator in the U.S. full-service space; its policies thus have tremendous influence on the market as a whole. The proposal, which we filed on behalf of Mercy Investment Services, aims to protect an essential component of modern medicine that supports a thriving economy: Darden opposes the proposal on false or irrelevant grounds: Darden says its existing #AntimicrobialResistance (“AMR”) policies are “reasonable and responsible.” #AMR is increasing at an alarming clip, creating expanding economic damage and consequent threat to the value of diversified portfolios, and Darden's policies and performance fall dramatically short of what it would take to mitigate the risk to its diversified shareholders. Darden posits a false choice between antibiotics use reduction and animal welfare. Antimicrobials reduction and animal welfare are but two legs of a three-legged stool. The third is cost. We show that it's in diversified investors’ best interest that Darden incur potentially higher costs to promote an animal husbandry system that does not degrade the essential resources on which we all rely for our survival. Read on to learn more: https://lnkd.in/ecUyPp4t #SystemStewardship Kim Farrant Akaash Sachdeva Sonya Sawtell-Rickson HESTA Maria Larsson Ortino Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) Caroline Le Meaux Edouard Dubois Amundi Emma Henningsson Emma Berntman, PhD FAIRR Initiative Abigail Herron Aviva Investors Caroline Boden Wellcome Trust Jeremy Knox
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Such a pleasure to see Kim Farrant on the news talking about the work we've done together with HESTA on applying a #guardrail on companies that are exacerbating #AntimicrobialResistance and thereby undermining diversified portfolio value. When investors are confronted with system-level risks, #SystemStewardship is the answer. Learn more about our guardrails here: https://lnkd.in/e-p3tv8R Rick Alexander Maria Larsson Ortino Michael Marks Edouard Dubois Caroline Le Meaux Abigail Herron Emma Berntman, PhD Wellcome Trust Jeremy Knox
Anti-microbial resistance presents a risk to global health and the economy that effects long-term investor returns. Nice work team in getting the message out there! Kim Farrant Andrea Jenke Saksham Malhotra. Call out to our friends at FAIRR Initiative The Shareholder Commons and Professor Branwen Morgan https://lnkd.in/gB_dVqtX
The rising human and economic cost of the overuse of antibiotics | The Business | ABC News
https://www.youtube.com/
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We hope you'll register for what is sure to be a fascinating conversation on August 14 with our CEO Rick Alexander, Fran Seegull of U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, Jorge Fontanez of B Lab U.S. & Canada, Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets, and David Bank of ImpactAlpha. They'll be exploring how investors can protect critical impact priorities in the shifting policy environment. #SystemStewardship #ImpactInvesting #ClimateAction #CorporateAccountability
The effects of recent Supreme Court decisions undermining public policy levers are already being felt in legal challenges to climate action and corporate accountability. Join me on Wednesday, August 14, at 12 pm ET in conversation with Jorge Fontanez of B Lab U.S. & Canada, Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets, Rick Alexander of The Shareholder Commons, Rachel J. Robasciotti of Adasina Social Capital and David Bank of ImpactAlpha to explore these development and discuss how we can advance effective advocacy. U.S. Impact Investing Alliance #impinv RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/e6udApP9
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Investor agitation for lower #GreenhouseGasEmissions is not anticompetitive. Climate Action 100+ #SystemStewardship #ClimateChange #Antitrust
This *absolutely brilliant* article by Maurits Dolmans explains that investor agitation for lower carbon emissions is not anticompetitive. He starts with the standard argument that such stewardship can be characterized as a simple attempt to make each company more efficient and valuable in light of the inevitable transition. But more importantly, he goes on to explain why there should be no antitrust problem with this form of stewardship even if it leads to reductions in production accross the industry and consequent higher prices (usually evidence of illegal collusion). It is because consumers will benefit from the reduction of the catastrophic externality of climate change: "Net Zero Agreements can alleviate market failures, by resolving the related collective action problem or prisoners’ dilemma (i.e., firms may reduce their greenhouse gas emissions only if others do, too, for fear that they will otherwise just lose market share to free riders without improving the overall situation). These agreements would thus preserve consumer welfare, by lowering the potentially huge costs to consumers of an unmitigated climate crisis." Exactly. The application of game theory to understand why less is more for consumers under antitrust law converges with the the need for this type of stewardship by investment fiduciaries. Insisting that an E&P company reduce its profits may reduce financial returns at a single company, but the collective action by shareholders to reduce emissions will ultimately benefit all diversified investors because mitigating climate damage is necessary to preserve the economy that undergirds their portfolios. While law and regulation can often protect consumers and investors from costly externalities, that doesn't always work--especially in times and places where the regulatory gears have been distorted--exactly what is happening under the Roberts Court in the United States. Amelia Miazad Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Ellen Quigley Lily Macfadyen Tomson David Rouch Alison Paton Robert Nash Michelle Meagher Ceres Danielle Fugere Matt Levine Responsible Investor Majority Action
The Need to Integrate Externalities, Market Failures, and Collective Action Problems in Antitrust Analysis—Thoughts on the US House Judiciary Committee Report on ESG Investigation and the Rebuttal Report
https://wp.nyu.edu/compliance_enforcement
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In our latest newsletter, we discuss how you can help ISS | Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass, Lewis & Co. to provide proxy voting advice that better serves modern investors by prioritizing system-level effects of corporate practices. If you want to protect your diversified portfolio value, you need advice that evaluates economy-wide impacts of business activity. Read on to see how you can participate in shaping proxy advice for a diversified world. https://lnkd.in/eSNMRVda #ProxyVoting #SystemStewardship
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In advance of proxy season 2024, we published case studies demonstrating the gap between company-first ESG advocacy and portfolio-first system stewardship for investors concerned about the harmful impacts of #PovertyWages and #AntimicrobialResistance (AMR). We show that measuring financial success on an enterprise-by-enterprise basis will never motivate companies or asset managers to transition to safe antimicrobial use budgets or optimized worker pay. Instead, the case studies describe how investors can and should use “guardrails” to hold companies and their executives accountable for the costs they externalize. Only this approach can preserve the long-term value of the diversified portfolios held by pension funds, foundations, endowments, and other institutions working on behalf of everyday savers. We worked with a growing number of asset owners and managers to bring these two guardrails to life in 2024, and now we're actively consulting with investors on the best way to continue and enhance these efforts in proxy season 2025. We would love to talk to you! https://lnkd.in/gJe8Htvf
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Thanks to Lawrence Heim and Practical ESG for the conversation about taking a portfolio-wide perspective on ESG matters, and how a single portfolio company can impact the dependencies of the rest of an investor's holdings--and what they can do about it. TIIP - The Investment Integration Project Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Joanne Bauer Danielle Fugere Brad Lander Delilah Rothenberg Adam Kanzer Maria Elena Anker Carol Adams Ben Cushing Sharmeen Contractor Gerbrand Haverkamp https://lnkd.in/dTMeqtc9
A Different Way for Companies to Think About ESG Investors - PracticalESG
practicalesg.com
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In our latest newsletter, we explain how recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court put regulatory protection in doubt. The regulatory gap makes it all the more important for investors to use their governance rights to protect their portfolios from the risks created when individual companies extract value from the critical systems that support the entire economy. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eygi6ffi
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