Shareholder engagement policy

We consider direct dialogue with companies to be an essential means of promoting better governance and more responsible practices.

We engage this type of dialogue with companies we consider to be “core”, that is to say the companies that form a foundation for our long-term investments, and with companies that can be included in environmental funds. This shareholder engagement strategy is designed to be constructive, endeavouring to confront companies with the most substantive challenges for them and their sector while making them aware of the need to improve their level of transparency in non-financial matters.

All of these dialogues are based on an analysis of the companies’ performance on the social, environmental and governance levels and their compliance with current or future regulations, with the ultimate result that they are able to define the opportunities, areas to be developed and risks revolving around an issuer.

 

Voting at General Meetings

The purpose of General Meetings is to provide a place for dialogue between the shareholders and the management. The GM is thus a special, legally required framework for shareholder commitment and democracy.

We vote at all the General Meetings of the high-priority companies where we have voting rights, and we sometimes cast a negative ballot.

A negative ballot is an opposition vote. It can be a vote “against” a resolution approved by the Board of Directors, but can also be a vote “for” a resolution not approved by the Board.

Each year we implement our voting policy in line with our commitments by voting at the Annual General Meetings we attend.

shareholder engagement policy (pdf - 1.07 MB)

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