Evaluating the Impact of Shareholder Engagement in Public Equity Investing

Christi Electris, Joshua Humphreys, Sandra Korn, Kristin Lang, Becky McDonnell

Contributors:
Jaime Silverstein

November 2014

This report investigates the positive outcomes of investor engagement on the environmental, social, and corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies. Although investors often engage in the proxy process, dialogue, public policy advocacy, and assertive action, no standard method exists to date for demonstrating the impact of these activities.

The report is the result of Phase 1 of the Impact of Equity Engagement (IE2) Project, a multistakeholder initiative to develop a robust reporting framework for documenting the impact of corporate engagement activities by public equity investors. The project aims to integrate public equity investing more deeply into the impact investing field. This first phase involved the development of the draft framework through in-depth consultation with the project’s steering committee as well as stakeholders and experts in the field.

Ten investors have committed to using the alpha version of the framework for the 2015 proxy season, as part of Phase 2 of the initiative’s work. The report will also continue to be updated and improved, and eventually turned into an online tool that can be used more broadly.