How Did You Vote at Disney Last Week?
Puberty blockers, defunding conservative media, & pushing oil/gas revenues out of employee pensions were on your companies' ballots.
Recently, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon laid into ISS and Glass Lewis, the two major proxy advisors used by 90% of the market, branding them an “incompetent” duopoly that “should be gone and dead, done with.” It’s safe to say that the argument about who you entrust with your financial influence isn’t going anywhere. To the contrary, it’s only getting louder & more important. Dimon’s is the high-level analysis — but at the practical level, this stewardship question has daily ramifications.
Last week, major businesses like Disney & Qualcomm put several proposals before their shareholders. If you own those companies through asset managers, you voted on them – but do you know how you voted? If the people to whom you have entrusted your money follow our proxy voting guidelines, we can tell you how you voted. However, if you entrusted votes to someone who does not, chances are you won’t be happy with the way they voted your shares.
The past few days have seen some major issues on the ballot — take a look at some of the highlights below.
Disney
A proposal that would ask Disney to cease participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. We supported this proposal: the HRC’s blend of actual radicalism (pushing companies to cover puberty blockers is anything but fiduciary) and reputational torching is bad for business — even businesses that sponsor them.
A proposal that would ask Disney to commit itself to political neutrality in advertising, given the company’s membership in GARM, an anti-conservative ad cartel that diverted millions of dollars in ad revenue based on activist goals. We helped to place this proposal on behalf of a client. Of course we supported it: if political neutrality is the best practice, that goes for advertising too. It’s time for Disney to regain shareholder/customer trust, and ad bias is a great place to start. The vast majority of asset managers voted against this — voted that being a member of a group which colluded against conservative media requires no explanation and no correction. Did yours?
A proposal that would ask the company for congruence with its emission reduction goals by divesting its employees’ retirement plans from fossil fuel assets. You voted against this proposal. Pushing employee pensions away from high-performing asset classes like fossil fuels because of activist, anti-energy goals isn’t good for business.
Qualcomm
A proposal that would ask Qualcomm for congruence with its emission reduction goals by divesting its retirement plans from fossil fuel assets. You voted against this proposal. Pushing employee pensions away from high-performing asset classes like fossil fuels because of activist, anti-energy goals isn’t in shareholders’ best interest any more at Qualcomm than it is at Disney.
Alignment Matters
If you used our guidelines, you know how you voted for these proposals. If your asset manager relied on the recommendations of the proxy voting industry however, you voted against efforts to depoliticize company policy, from ad bias to partnerships with radical activist organizations.
This is why the alignment that BR guidelines create matters: the proxy advisors that control the vast majority of votes at companies like Disney and Qualcomm are not interested in getting companies back to politically neutral yet. We’ll keep at that — and until then, we’ll be keeping you updated on what’s on the ballot at America’s biggest companies.
Jerry Bowyer is President of Bowyer Research.
Isaac Willour is a Corporate Relations Analyst at Bowyer Research.