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According to its newly released Responsible Investment report, Norges Bank Investment Management divested from 86 companies in 2023 (of 526 since 2012) due to its determination that they posed high environmental and social risks, as follows:

Additional noteworthy stats include:

• NBIM supported 34% of 421 sustainability-related shareholder proposals, 85% of which sought increased disclosure and the balance of which sought implementation of a policy or framework. It voted against the other proposals for various reasons, most commonly due to overprescriptiveness (55%), followed by its determination that the company’s approach to the issue was already sufficient (40%). Lack of materiality accounted for about 5% of “against” votes.
• For the first time, NBIM filed four of its own climate-related shareholder proposals—all with US companies. It also voted against directors at 22 companies based on climate considerations. Comparatively, it voted against directors at nine companies based on social considerations and three companies based on environmental considerations other than climate.

The report also recaps NBIM’s perspective on nature-related risks and related disclosure, responsible AI and corporate engagement, voting transparency (see our recent report here), and more.

See NBIM’s release; these articles: “Norges pulls plug on 86 companies not pulling their ESG weight in 2023” (IR Magazine) and “NBIM books €880m profit from ESG risk divestments, takes hit on ethics blacklist” (Responsible Investor); these prior reports: “Norges Bank Ups the Ante on Climate” and here: Norges Bank Votes No on Prescriptive E&S Proposals and “Norges Bank Articulates Responsible AI Expectations”; and additional resources on our Institutional Investors page » Norges Bank.

           This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!