Daily Practice

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The ‘ESG’ Acronym Is Less Popular – Does It Matter?

It’s clear that over the past few years, investors have tweaked their voting policies to tone down use of the term “ESG.” And it’s also clear that more and more companies are changing the title of their reports relating to ESG issues to another term, with the most popular one being “Sustainability.” Other notable titles are “Growth and Impact” and “Corporate Social Responsibility.” Not to …

Large Companies Are Now Living in a Double Materiality World: What About Smaller Companies?

With most S&P 500 companies well underway on their CSRD materiality assessments, it’s not surprising that there is a fast-growing number of them that have completed – or are in the process of completing – “double” materiality assessments. Cooley’s Michael Mencher notes that smaller companies are less likely to be on this path if they’re not subject to the CSRD, and their references to a …

What Does a Shareholder Engagement Program Look Like?

Continuing on with our “shareholder engagement” series of blogs, you need an organized set of engagement procedures with priorities and the ability to call on internal cross-department coordination – and director participation – when needed, depending on what is on the engagement agenda. Some companies have a written shareholder engagement policy to memorialize their processes and procedures and help set the company’s ground rules. You …

Challenges in Meeting 2030 Climate Goals? What To Do Now

I was talking to Cooley’s Beth Sasfai and Michael Mencher about the challenges many companies are facing with ambitious climate goals that no longer seem realistic. Here’s what Beth and Michael told me (also see them in this 3-minute video with Emma Bichet about the same topic): Maybe you set 2030 targets way back in 2019 or 2020 – or recently set targets to meet …

D&O Questionnaires: How In-House Practitioners Must Use Their Judgment (Part 2)

Here is Part 2 of a two-part blog series about nine aspects of the D&O questionnaire process for which in-house lawyers must use their judgment (here is Part 1 covering the first three aspects and more): 4. Frame the question properly It’s important how you frame the question. This bears repeating: It’s important how you frame the question. For those areas where you expect there …

D&O Questionnaires: How In-House Practitioners Must Use Their Judgment

It’s that time of year. Time to dust off your D&O questionnaire and figure out what to do now for the upcoming proxy season. The D&O questionnaire is an important part of the proxy drafting process. When I joined Cooley, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we have our own electronic D&O questionnaire product – Cooley D+O. I was talking with Luci Altman …

How Do You Know Who to Engage With?

Who makes the voting decision at a particular investor can vary. For the larger investors, they tend to have stewardship teams who vote and handle engagements – and that is straightforward. Sometimes stewardship teams are referred to as proxy committees. Beyond that, it can be tricky and take experience to learn how each investor operates and who are the players. You could have an active …