Liontrust Sustainable Investment Engagement and Voting Annual Review 2021 - Flipbook - Page 16
2021 Initiative
Description
We said we would:
Increasing
corporate
diversity
• Step up our voting
We believe companies
pressure to increase
that are more diverse are
corporate diversity in
better able to prosper
three ways:
over the long term so
we are engaging to
1. R aising our
encourage greater
threshold for voting
diversity. We are looking
from 30% to 33%
at gender and ethnic
female boards
balance at a board
level, senior positions
2. Increased
and within the workforce,
stringency when
as well as at efforts to
it comes to voting
increase transparency
against rather than
and reduce pay gaps.
abstaining
3. Targeting
companies with
a lack of ethnic
diversity
In 2021, we increased our voting threshold from 30% to 33% for
female boards and continued to see good progress on increased
representation. We voted against the Chair of the Nomination
Committee due to a lack of gender diversity on the Board of 10
companies and withheld support on re-election for a further six. This
means we voted against or withheld support on 11% of a total of
In 2021:
In 2022, we will:
• We increased
the Board gender
threshold to 33%.
• Step up pressure by
voting against a wider
set of companies
where there is a lack
of ethnic diversity.
• We voted against
the Chair of the
Nomination Committee • Look at gender and
ethnic pay gap data
due to a lack of
for investee companies
gender diversity on
and engage on action
the Board for 10
plans to address
companies.
imbalances.
• We withheld our
• Find and encourage
support on the rebest practice examples
election of the Chair
of wider D&I policies
of the Nomination
and practices, such
Committee of six
as LGBQT+ and
investee companies.
Neurodiversity.
• We voted against five
companies due to a
lack of sufficient ethnic
board diversity and
abstained on one.
147 votable meetings due to a lack of gender diversity. We voted
against the same resolution due to a lack of ethnic diversity on the
board of five companies over the year.
Overall, we have now targeted 40 companies when Board gender
diversity was lacking from 2016 to 2021. Of these:
Board gender diversity
Number of companies
Average % of women on Board
(before we introduced our
Average % of women on Board
voting policy)
(after 2021 AGM)
Improved and now have over
33% female representation
23 (58%)
21%
39%
Improved but still under 33%
female representation on Board
12 (30%)
18%
28%
Did not improve
4 (10%)
22%
22%
Deterioration
1 (3%)
27%
25%
We were also finally able to support the re-election of the Chair of the Nomination Committee at the AGMs of several companies in 2021,
having previously withheld support due to a lack of Board gender diversity. Adobe, Intuit, JLEN Environmental Assets Group and London
Stock Exchange Group were all able to meet our higher threshold of 33%.
16 - Liontrust Sustainable Investment: Engagement and Voting: Annual Review 2021
