Report
Voting Matters 2024: Are asset managers using their proxy votes for action on environmental and social issues?
We analysed how 70 of the world’s largest asset managers voted on 279 shareholder resolutions aimed at improving companies’ impacts on pressing environmental and social issues during the 2024 proxy voting season.
For the first time, we also analysed how asset managers voted on 2,227 management items at 126 companies, such as votes on director re-election. A subset of 148 of items is presented in the ranking table, comprised of votes on management items where a recommendation had been made ahead of the voting season by selected organisations.
Support for shareholder resolutions has hit an all-time low
In 2024, only four (1.4%) out of the 279 resolutions we assessed received majority support, less than half of the percentage that gained a majority vote in 2023 (3%), and far lower than the 21% which passed in 2021. This is reflected in an ongoing downward trend in the average percentage support that these resolutions received, which was 20.6% in 2024 compared to 40% in 2021.
This concerning downward trend represents a continued failure of the asset management industry to exercise its shareholder voting power to hold some of the world’s largest companies to account on their environmental and social impacts. There is no evidence the nature of shareholder resolutions put forward in 2024 would discourage asset managers from voting in favour compared to previous years. There is also no indication that corporations globally have made enough progress on climate, social, and nature-related targets to negate the need for further shareholder action.
The four largest asset managers' support for environmental and social resolutions continues to fall.
The four largest asset managers in the world (BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, State Street Global Advisors, and Vanguard) have an outsized impact on the outcome shareholder resolutions at some of the world’s largest companies.
Their combined assets under management represent US$23 trillion. Together, they own over a quarter of 55 of the companies in our assessment, with the overall average ownership around 17%. Yet in 2024 they voted for fewer shareholder proposals than ever, with all four asset managers placed in the bottom ten positions in our ranking of asset manager voting performance. Vanguard, the world’s second largest asset manager, performed the worst of all the managers we assessed, voting in favour of 0% of shareholder proposals.
Asset managers’ excuses for inaction or blocking progress are not convincing.
Asset managers made similar excuses in their voting rationales and public statements, defending their decision to vote against environmental and social resolutions. For example, BlackRock published statements excusing their poor voting record by saying that the majority of resolutions are overreaching, lack economic merit or did not promote long-term shareholder value. These arguments do not stand up to scrutiny.
Ten asset managers, including the world’s four largest, voted against every human rights resolution at companies associated with weapons production.
Ten asset managers not only continue to invest in these companies but voted against every single human rights related resolution filed at the companies.
All four of these companies’ products have been linked to human rights violations or used by states linked to human rights violations (see full report for supporting evidence).