Consistent with what we have seen from BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s updated proxy guidelines exclude board gender and ethnicity expectations that triggered votes against members of the Nominating Committee in its 2024 proxy voting guidelines (pages 5-6). See this redline for these and additional changes.
In contrast, T. Rowe Price retained most of its board diversity language for the Americas in its updated voting guidelines, as follows [blacklined against 2024 board diversity policy]:
At a high level, the composition of the average company board does not yet reflect the diversity of the stakeholders these companies represent — their employees, customers, suppliers, communities, or investors. Our experience leads us to observe that boards lacking in diversity represent a sub-optimal composition and a potential risk to the company’s competitiveness over time.
We recognize diversity can be defined across a number of dimensions. However, if a board is to be considered meaningfully diverse, in our view some diversity across gender, ethnic, or nationality lines must be present. For companies in the Americas, we generally oppose the re-elections of Governance Committee members if we find no evidence of board diversity.