Corporate Secretary's interview with active investor Trillium Asset Management's SVP & Director of Shareholder Advocacy Jonas Kron revealed these key insights about the investor's plans for 2020 and overall perspective:
- Trillium's shareholder proposals and/or engagement will focus on executive team diversity, reproductive rights, economic inequality, drug pricing and the opioid epidemic, and the social impact of tech companies.
- 10 of 13 of Trillium's workplace diversity proposals in 2018 were withdrawn based on company commitments of some type. Trillium believes E&S proposals are much more likely to be negotiated out of the proxy due to there being greater opportunity for "finding common ground and establishing ongoing dialogues" than is the case for governance proposals, which allegedly are more black and white.
- Successful engagements for Trillium often involve the company's IR, Corporate Secretary, GC, executive team, and directors, and a coordinated effort among internal players to ensure that the proper persons are involved in any particular engagement, but should not involve the company's PR persons are involved in any particular engagement, but should not involve the company's PR department.
Trillium also discussed how the firm determines which issues are on its agenda for the upcoming year - a process that encompasses assessing its portfolio companies' material ESG issues, the environmental or other societal impact of those companies, whether addressing the issues warrant a long-term approach or are conducive to a quicker fix, and client E&S values.
See this Roll Call article and our prior report: "Trillium Asset Management: Workplace & Executive Diversity Proposals." This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!