Recent developments in stewardship

Below are some of our recent developments for 2024:

• FRC UK Stewardship Code signatory status: achieved for our 2023 Stewardship report
• Held over 1,200 company meetings, over 150 engagements and voted on more than 11,000 resolutions at just over 800 meetings
• FRC Stewardship Code consultation: actively contributed to the consultation process, through the Investor Forum, IA and directly
• Industry participation: actively participated in industry initiatives including The Investment Association (IA), Investor Forum and Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC). Our Chief Investment Officer (CIO) became Chairman of the IA’s Stewardship Committee
• Internal infrastructure: enhanced engagement record keeping, tracking and dissemination across investment strategies and implemented accompanying dashboards. Engagement milestones logged and timelines developed
• Won the 2024 Investor Relations Society Best Practice 'Best Investor Engagement' award as voted for by the Investor Relations departments of listed companies and analysts surveyed by Extel
• Cross-strategy thematic and sector research undertaken on key themes
• Internal investment collaboration: migration to an improved research sharing platform, allowing for continued collaboration and cross-pollination amongst investment teams. Strengthened partnership between Stewardship and Impact teams through working together on specific engagements and thematic research
• External research: established stronger and broader research relationships with key external research analysts leading to a strengthening of research availability and quality
• Climate: developed climate data dashboard and climate engagement plan drawing on the Net Zero Investment Framework (NZIF) 2.0 published in June
• Continued involvement in industry initiatives on modern slavery, notably through the Find it, Fix it, Prevent it initiative
• Voting policy: updated our voting policy including updating our principles on shareholder rights and climate
• Exclusions: implemented our extended firmwide weapons exclusions
• Completed Year 6, and launched Year 7, of the Artemis Profit Hunt in partnership with Arrival Education. To date, over 400 students have participated in the programme, supported by Artemis mentors from across the firm. Through the Diversity Project we also helped launch the Profit Hunt at other member firms
• First Taskforce for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) entity and product level reports published
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI): deepened our involvement in industry initiatives principally through the Diversity Project; formed a new partnership with Progress Together, an organisation created to drive socio-economic diversity at senior level across UK financial services; grew our DEI working group