Blogs

Georgeson released summaries for each of the Big Three’s—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street—proxy voting policy updates, which we reported on here, here, and here , respectively.

Weil’s “Heads Up for the 2025 Proxy Season: Re-Considering Board Diversity Disclosures; Update on the ‘Big ‘” Investor Policies” summarizes updated board diversity proxy voting policies recently published by BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (‘the “Big Three”), as well as ISS and Glass Lewis (which we reported on here and here, respectively).

The memo includes a link to an updated version of the firm’s annual publication: “The Big Three & ESG: A Guide to BlackRock, State Street & Vanguard Proxy Voting Policies & Guidance on Key ESG Issues,” which summarizes the expectations of the Big Three across the following topics based on their most recently published proxy voting guidelines and additional guidance documents:

• Board diversity
• Director time commitments / overboarding
• Independent board leadership
• Board oversight of ESG risks and opportunities
• Use of ESG disclosure frameworks
• Climate risk-related disclosure
• Human capital management / workforce diversity, equity and inclusion
• Human rights
• Political contributions, lobbying, and trade association memberships
• ESG compensation metrics

The guide includes ESG-related disclosure and practice tips and a summary of 2025 policy changes on most of the foregoing topics. Links to the source documents are included in the References section at the end of the report.

Access additional 2025 institutional investor policies on our Institutional Investors page and proxy advisor policies on our Proxy Advisors page.

                        This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!