Institutional investors believe that shareholder meetings should be more streamlined. Advocate Eumedion concludes on Sunday an evaluation of the meetings in 2023 that they were too often disrupted by climate activists. It has been a rather chaotic shareholder meeting season.
Read also: Climate activists buy shares in companies. Not for influence, but to ask one question
Eumedion, which represents major investors such as insurers and pension funds, wants the chairman of the supervisory board to lead the shareholders’ meeting more strictly. For example, shareholders must be given a maximum speaking time more often or a maximum time must be set for certain subjects. According to the interest representative, the interference of climate parties led to long meetings and the limited ability to discuss topics other than climate policy. Eumedion says that the “broader interest” of climate activists is welcome, but only if they “respect the meeting order and leave enough space for other meeting attendees to participate in the debate.”
In the first half of this year, climate activists took action at the shareholders’ meetings of Ahold Delhaize, ING Group, Unilever and Shell, among others. By buying one share, someone is already allowed to ask questions during a shareholders’ meeting. Demonstrators demanded attention for the environmental impact of these companies, because they believe that the board is not doing enough to make things more sustainable. For example, at Ahold Delhaize – the parent company of Albert Heijn – activists kept asking the same question about the goal of reducing CO2 emissions, until an answer was given.