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Responsible Investor reported on the increasing number of institutional investors that are undertaking or dabbling in publicly disclosing their proxy votes in advance of shareholder meetings either in the name of enhanced transparency or more opportunistically as part of an overall engagement strategy. Among those identified as predisclosing in whole or in part are Legal & General Investment Management, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), Neuberger Berman, PGGM, and Swedish government fund AP7. The Principles for Responsible Investment has also created a resolution database that has a field for investors to pre-declare their voting intention on filed proposals.

In addition to one-off testimonials, the article cites a recent study co-authored by NBIM analyzing the impact of NBIM’s pre-disclosure of its voting intentions, which found that its pre-disclosures of votes against proposals led to an average 2.7% increase in “against” votes by other shareholders:

We analyze the impact of a large shareholder disclosing its voting decisions prior to shareholder meetings on final vote outcomes for management and shareholder proposals. We find that pre-disclosures of against votes lead to an average increase of 2.7 percentage points in against votes by other shareholders. Voting pre-disclosures are more effective for proposals with a higher information demand, and if the large shareholder pre-discloses a decision that is not directly observable from its proxy-voting guidelines. The results highlight the potential for large institutional investors to use voting pre-disclosure as a tool for influencing other shareholders and, ultimately, companies.