Courtesy of Proxy Analytics, Morgan Stanley published its 2025 Proxy Voting Policy and Procedures Consistent with the trend among many large institutional investor policies this season, noteworthy updates compared to the 2024 guidelines include the elimination of the board gender, race, and ethnicity diversity expectations (focusing instead on diversity in its broadest sense to include diversity of thought, background, skills, and experiences) and elimination of stated support for employee and board diversity disclosure, including EEO-1 disclosure, as revealed by this redline.
Support for shareholder proposals is now expressly tethered to financial materiality, the company’s exposure to relevant risks and opportunities, current disclosure, and the company’s sector and geographic areas of operations. Conversely, a lack of support is associated with proposals on matters more appropriately addressed by the board; addressed by legislation or regulation; unduly burdensome requests; and matters that Morgan Stanley deems not financially material.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!