AGM season is very important to us here at ShareAction. It provides us, investors, and engaged members of the public the opportunity to directly challenge company Boards where efforts to reduce harm to society are too slow. Annual General Meetings (AGMs) are run by companies to bring together their shareholders, so we purchase shares in those that we want to influence to provide a legal route to their meetings.

Companies have a massive impact on everyone’s health: from the quality of the jobs they offer, to the products they sell, and how they shape local communities and environments. As shareholders, investors have a critical responsibility to society – and financial interest – in making sure companies protect people’s health.

Below, we explore how our health team has been spending the 2025 proxy season. We cover each of our two key initiatives aimed at reducing companies’ negative impacts on health: through the sale of unhealthy foods, and emissions of toxic air pollution.

From investors to young activists: holding Big Food to account for their unhealthy food sales

This season, representatives and supporters of our Healthy Markets Initiative (HMI) have attended the AGMs of some of the world’s biggest and most influential food and beverage companies, spanning the manufacturing, retail and ‘out of home’ sectors. These meetings are an opportunity to hold Board members accountable for the companies' impact on public health, and to make specific asks from investors in ShareAction's Long-Term Investors in People’s Health (LIPH) programme. These asks centre around companies selling healthier food and being more transparent about how healthy their sales are.

Here’s the full list of food and beverage companies whose AGMs we’ve attended (or will be attending in the coming months):

• Manufacturers: Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Unilever, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Mondelēz International & General Mills

• Retailers: Tesco

• Out of home: Domino’s Pizza Inc (US), Domino’s Pizza Group (UK), Papa John’s International, Yum! Brands, McDonald’s, Greggs, Restaurant Brands International, Chipotle Mexican Grill & JD Wetherspoon’s

Virtual AGMs in the US have been a barrier to meaningful engagement between Boards and their shareholders. As part of the growing trend of virtual-only AGMs in the United States, many of HMI’s target companies’ meetings were held online this year, including those of Coca Cola, PepsiCo, and McDonald’s. This has made meaningful engagement between companies and their shareholders challenging due to the remoteness and short duration of meetings (Domino’s Pizza Inc’s AGM lasted a total of 16 minutes!), plus the selective filtering, and strict word limits, of shareholder questions.

Meanwhile, in the UK and Europe, we have attended several AGMs in person to ask important questions directly to the Board. ShareAction LIPH supporters – including CCLA, EQ Investors, Ethos Foundation, Greenbank, and St. Francis of Philadelphia – have demonstrated bold shareholder leadership this season by holding companies with a seismic influence on public health accountable for their lack of transparency on what they are selling. As a result, a number of companies have agreed to meet with LIPH investors to discuss their health and nutrition strategies.

This AGM season, we have also partnered with Bite Back – a youth-led food activist organisation – to support their young campaigners to attend the meetings of Domino’s Pizza Group, McDonald’s and Greggs, to ask some hard-hitting questions directly to the Board.

Turning the tide as companies start to respond to investor pressure

This AGM season, we’ve also had a number of huge wins. Several companies - even in the US - have started to respond to investors’ concerns by being more transparent about the healthiness of the products they are selling.

For example, Nestlé (the biggest food and drink company in the world) credited ShareAction earlier this year as it made a commitment to start disclosing how healthy its sales are, aligning with industry best practice and using a government-backed method as recommended by public health experts.

Additionally, for the first time, General Mills – following five years of HMI AGM questions – has started reporting on the healthiness of its global volume using internationally recognised metrics – although there are few details shared on its methodology.

What comes after AGM season for the Healthy Markets Initiative? Turning AGM momentum into meaningful progress

Whilst AGMs form a crucial moment in our campaign journey, the work doesn’t stop once the meetings are over.

Over the coming months, LIPH investors will meet with a number of ‘out of home’ food and beverage companies to initiate a constructive dialogue on health and nutrition transparency and risk mitigation.

At the same time, we will continue to meet with manufacturers, maintaining pressure on those who have improved their transparency to focus now on the critical work of actually selling more healthier food.

The Invisible Risk: why air pollution is the next corporate accountability challenge

Beyond its work on healthy food, ShareAction’s LIPH programme has a much newer initiative focused on tackling companies to reduce their toxic air pollution emissions. We want those in high emitting sectors to be more transparent about air pollution related impacts, risks and opportunities – and to accelerate action to reduce health harming pollutants from their own operations and across their value chains.

However, most companies won’t do this alone. We are also calling on policymakers and standard-setters to level the playing field through mandatory corporate reporting frameworks and legislation on air pollution.

ShareAction and our supporters have been making the most of AGM season by attending meetings at large, systemically important global companies from high-emitting sectors, including freight, logistics, and construction. At these meetings, with companies such as Amazon, DHL, and UPS, we’ve asked questions about their current approach to air pollution and received mixed responses but promises of further engagement.

Where the Clean Air Initiative goes from here

We will continue to engage on this critical sustainability topic with companies in high-emitting sectors in the coming months. To find out more about the next phase of the Clean Air Initiative, sign up here to attend our launch webinar.