Fidelity International has published its voting considerations for Europe’s AGM season.
The company says it has four “systemic themes” it identified at the start of the year to help drive the firm’s engagement approach: nature loss, climate change, strong and effective governance, and social disparities. The key highlights of its voting plans are:
Remuneration packages
Fidelity says it will continue to support fair, transparent remuneration structures that incentivise senior managers to deliver on company strategy, while aligning with shareholders’ interests.
Addressing climate change
In line with Fidelity’s ambition to achieve net zero across its investment portfolios by 2050, including halving its portfolios carbon footprint by 20303, and to phase out investment in thermal coal by 2030 in OECD countries and in the rest of the world by 2040.
Fidelity says it will vote against directors at companies that fail to meet its minimum expectations on climate change governance, policies, and disclosures and Fidelity will continue to use its votes to advocate for companies to adopt decarbonisation strategies that support a credible just transition to net zero.
Tackling deforestation
Following the publication of its Nature Roadmap at the end of last year, this year Fidelity will begin to vote against companies in high-risk sectors that do not meet its minimum standards of deforestation-related practices and disclosure.
Emilie Goodall, Head of Stewardship, Europe, Fidelity International, said, “As a research-led asset manager, we believe that active ownership is a positive force for driving sustainable business practices. Voting is a powerful tool for change and as the AGM season begins in Europe, it is important for us to reiterate our voting intentions on the matters that we think are pivotal to address for the year ahead.
“However, voting statistics alone simply reflect the means, rather than the ends. We believe as an industry we must move towards tracking engagement outcomes, measuring progress made beyond the vote, against clear and consistently communicated shareholder expectations. As part of this, we have been trialling an enhanced engagement tracking approach, to better capture and monitor our ongoing engagement activity at the underlying company level, particularly in relation to our thematic engagements.
“This approach incorporates a wide range of engagement tools to push for real change – for example, alongside continuous behind-the-scenes engagement with all companies we invest in, we also engage with policymakers and other collaborative engagements in a bid to influence positive system-wide change.”
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