Here’s the intro from this Cooley Alert penned by a bevy of our finest:
“On January 31, 2025, Vanguard issued its proxy voting policy for US portfolio companies, following the publication of BlackRock’s proxy voting guidelines for benchmark policies – US securities in December 2024. The updates from these two leading institutional investors introduce new provisions to reflect evolving perspectives on governance, compensation, sustainability and shareholder engagement.
As with the policy updates from Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis published in December and November, respectively, most updates from both BlackRock and Vanguard were relatively minor. However, both firms include notable changes to policy language on board diversity, which along with other changes, may signal a less prescriptive approach on environmental and social (E&S) topics going forward, as also reflected by very weak support from both BlackRock and Vanguard for E&S shareholder proposals in the 2024 proxy season. Below, we provide an overview of key policy updates and insights from their 2025 policies.”
Authored by
Broc Romanek