BORDER TO COAST HIGHLIGHTS ENGAGEMENT RECORD IN LATEST STEWARDSHIP REPORT
Posted on August 7th, 2024
- Annual Responsible Investment and Stewardship Report highlights how the pool has continued to strengthen its approach to ESG integration, voting, and engagement over the year.
- Border to Coast voted on more than 13,000 resolutions at over 1,000 meetings in 2023/24 on behalf of Partner Funds.
As a long-term investor, Border to Coast Pensions Partnership (‘Border to Coast’) has published its latest report outlining its progress in responsible investment and stewardship over the past year.
The pool’s latest Responsible Investment and Stewardship Report (‘the report’) outlines its votes on 13,406 resolutions at 1,052 meetings in the year to 31 March 2024 and details its strengthened voting policy in practice.
Colin Baines, Stewardship Manager, said: “As a long-term and responsible investor, our stewardship – including proxy voting and engagement – is a powerful means of driving positive change in the companies in which we invest and adding long term value to those companies. With our collective strength as a pool, we have a seat at the table to influence company policy and practice and represent the voice of asset owners, our Partner Funds.
“Our stewardship report demonstrates the impact we are having on investee companies and the wider investment industry just six years since inception. We have a deep pool of investment experience and talent at Border to Coast and we will continue to build on this capability for Partner Funds in the years ahead.”
Key highlights for each theme:
Low carbon transition
Direct engagement with oil majors Shell and BP took place due to insufficient medium-term emission reduction targets. Both companies are significant contributors to Border to Coast’s financed emissions and the pool has continued engagement with each of them to lay out clear expectations on progress. As part of engagement escalation, we signalled our concern by publicly pre-declaring our votes against management ahead of the AGMs, including against the re-election of the Board Chairs.
Border to Coast also launched a collaborative programme of engagement with Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays, and HSBC to encourage the integration of just transition into net zero strategies. The response has been positive, with two banks to date advising that they will progress a just transition policy or integration into existing net zero policy.
Waste and water management
Border to Coast lead engagement with Yorkshire Water and Northumbria Water on behalf of a collaboration coordinated by Royal London Asset Management (RLAM). The pool welcomed positive progress with Yorkshire Water bringing forward sewage infrastructure investment which engagement had highlighted as an issue and Northumbria Water increasing disclosures on areas identified as a priority.
Social inclusion and labour management:
Border to Coast joined the ‘Find it, Fix it, Prevent it’ collaboration on Modern Slavery led by the investment manager CCLA, targeting 30 companies across the high-risk hospitality and construction sectors. Border to Coast is leading the engagement with Crest Nicholson requesting more proactive risk management.
Diversity of thought
Chinese shopping platform Meituan appointed its first female Board member in summer 2023, and is looking to appoint another, following direct engagement and through collaboration with the 30% Club to highlight that the company lagged behind its peers. In 2023, we voted against management due to insufficient board diversity at 82 companies.
Our reports continue to demonstrate the significant impact we are having on investee companies and the wider investment industry…
