Blogs

T. Rowe Price released its proxy voting summary for the 12-month period ended June 30, 2024, for T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. (TRPA). The summary largely reflects a company-specific approach to evaluating proxy proposals in light of particular facts and circumstances and consistent with its proxy voting guidelines.

Overall, TRPA supported management on 89% of shareholder proposals and 87% of management proposals globally on the most prevalent and significant voting issues.

Notably, consistent with observations made by other institutional investors including, most recently, BlackRock and Vanguard, T. Rowe notes the increased volume and reduced quality of shareholder proposals on environmental, social, and political issues:

Our observation is that the overall quality of proposals in these categories remains poor. Many proposals contain inaccuracies, or they are poorly targeted. Many address issues not financially material for the company. In addition, we’ve observed a marked increase in the level of prescriptive requests as proponents moved swiftly from disclosure‑based requests to action‑based requests seeking specific commitments, capital investments, or structural changes from the targeted companies. Our view on these prescriptive proposals is that they usurp both management’s responsibility to make operational decisions as well as the Board’s responsibility to guide and oversee such decisions.