For the last few years Ethical Futures have been proud supporters of ShareAction and the work they do to bring positive change to the financial services sector. Established in 2005, ShareAction are a registered charity who aim to influence corporate behaviour through investor engagement.  

ShareAction choose to engage with the sector by asking questions at the Annual General Meetings (AGMs) of publicly listed companies. Asking questions at AGMs can be an escalation tool and can help bring attention to issues that really matter to investors. 

Last year Julian asked a question regarding the ethnicity pay gap at the AGM of Lloyd’s Banking Group in Glasgow. This year Alan attended the ABRDN AGM in Edinburgh to challenge them on their ethnicity pay gap (you can find out more about that here) and Marian attended Lloyd’s AGM to ask about their green finance reporting.  

We recently attended a webinar where ShareAction shared the impact that their shareholder activism has had this year. We found out that ShareAction: 

During this AGM season, ShareAction have seen an increase in the amount of security and the levels of hostility towards shareholder activists. One woman attending the webinar shared that she had a negative experience at an AGM when she was refused entry as the security guard didn’t like her t-shirt. She eventually got an apology from the CEO, but this was obviously not a good solution as she was not able to ask her question. 

We plan to continue our work with ShareAction if we are given the opportunity as we think it’s important to get involved and use our voice to help action change. If you’d like to learn more about ShareAction and their shareholder activism work, click here.