Stewardship activities in brief
ACADEMEDIA
A meeting with management to encourage continued emphasis and communication on the company’s social licence as an independent school operator, despite the political contention around privately run schools.
BANK OF IRELAND
A meeting to discuss governance factors, such as remuneration, audit quality and board director tenure, and to encourage interaction between the company and ESG rating agencies.
BP
A meeting following last quarter’s results to discuss the company’s strategic update and subsequent negative media reports about its low-carbon strategy.
CASTINGS
A discussion about the ongoing role of the former Chair of the board and the strategy of the business under its new leadership and to encourage the company to increase its return on capital.
DASSAULT AVIATION
A brief conversation on the company’s stance on engaging with ESG ratings providers, encouraging Dassault to communicate with theseagencies and improve its ESG score.
MUSIC MAGPIE
Initial conversations to understand the company’s business model, whether more capital is needed and how the company would benefit from consumer trends towards more sustainable consumption.
NEC
Having discussed the issue for many years, we applauded the company for shifting from a traditional Japanese kansayaku board to a three-committee board structure.
NEXUS INFRASTRUCTURE
A meeting to discuss the board’s effectiveness in preparing the new management team, given a change in the corporate structure of the company.
ORIX
An opportunity to encourage more ambitious targets for gender diversity at management and board level, given 2030 targets havealmost been met already.
ROHM
A meeting that touched on progress being made on board diversity and to encourage the company to consider appointing an outside director as Chair.
ROVI
An introductory meeting to understand the long-term vision of the company and discuss future succession planning, given the family-owned structure.
RUBIS
Despite recently divesting, we met with the company to discuss its capital allocation strategy and whether our concerns were being addressed.
SHELL
A letter to the CEO, focusing on the transition plan, to gauge the prospects for return on capital through decarbonisation.
SHIN-ETSU CHEMICAL
A discussion on the tenure of board directors, given our concerns around particularly long tenures, and the pace of cross-shareholding reductions over recent years.
SIMPLEX
A conversation on the structure of the board of directors, specifically focusing on female representation and director independence.
SONY
A response to our query about human rights abuses in the company’s supply chain, confirming no suppliers are involved in the use of forced labour from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
TITAN CEMENT
A comprehensive discussion on the company’s transition plan and how we propose to analyse and track Titan’s progress against its targets. A number of topics were discussed, including capital allocation, internal carbon pricing, policy incentives and the wider value chain.
UPM
A meeting to discuss the company’s emissions reduction targets, to communicate which metrics we plan to monitor progress against and to understand how the company is addressing bottlenecks.
VAN ELLE
A discussion on potential acquisition activity in the industry, given the company’s desire to scale.
VIVENDI
A meeting that covered a number of ESG-related topics, including the company’s ESG rating, its commitment to disclosing to CDP, the approval of science-based targets, labour rights in the supply chain and the independence of its audit and remuneration committees
YARA INTERNATIONAL
An opportunity to provide input on the company’s remuneration policy, in light of the Norwegian government’s proposal to restrict the variable component of compensation.
VARIOUS
A collaborative letter sent to a number of companies, which we co- signed as a member of the IIGCC, encouraging development of a Net Zero transition plan consistent with Net Zero Investment Framework alignment criteria.
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