Archive
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ESG Integration Awards – 2022 nominations deadline reminder
Entries can be submitted up to April 15 Corporate Secretary and IR Magazine are seeking nominations for the inaugural ESG Integration Awards with the final deadline for submissions being midnight ET on April 15. Entries can be submitted – free of charge – by corporate secretaries, general counsel, compliance officers, sustainability teams and IR professionals at companies listed/domiciled in the US, or by vendors or service providers on behalf of their corporate clients. The winners of the ESG Integration Awards – 2022 will be announced at the end of our ESG Integration Forum on Thursday, July 14 in New York.…
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McDonald’s shareholders to vote on civil rights audit proposal
Company is latest to field such a request Shareholders in McDonald’s Corporation will vote next month on a proposal pressing the fast-food company to carry out a civil rights audit – the latest in a series of shareholder proposals looking at issuers’ impact in the area. The SEC last week rejected a request from McDonald’s for no-action relief if it excluded the proposal from its proxy statement. Investors will instead vote at the company’s May 26 AGM on the measure, which was brought by the SOC Investment Group. It urges the board ‘to oversee a third-party audit analyzing the adverse…
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NiSource names next general counsel
Kim Cuccia joined utility company in 2009 Aside from climate change, the ESG topic that has garnered the most investor attention over the last two years is human capital management (HCM). During that time, the Covid-19 pandemic and global racial justice protests have pushed social issues firmly into the spotlight. Institutional investors, as well as other stakeholders, have demanded greater assurance that companies are caring for and managing their workforces effectively and respectfully. In response, businesses have rethought the way they report HCM information, providing greater detail and expanding the use of KPIs. But investors continue to push for additional…
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How companies are reporting on human capital management
Stakeholders are pushing companies to talk more about issues like employee engagement, health & safety and diversity, equity & inclusion Natural gas and electric utility company NiSource has appointed interim general counsel Kim Cuccia to the full-time role of general counsel and corporate secretary. Cuccia assumed the role of interim general counsel following the departure of Anne-Marie D’Angelo in late 2021. D’Angelo joined Molson Coors as chief legal and government affairs officer in December last year. She had joined the utility in 2019. Cuccia joined NiSource in November 2009. Since then she has held roles of increasing seniority in the…
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ESG in the Boardroom report – available now
Corporate Secretary’s ‘ESG in the Boardroom’ report presents data collected from a survey conducted among in-house governance professionals such as general counsel and corporate secretaries. It provides important insights into, among other things, which part of the board is taking responsibility for ESG oversight, when ESG discussions are taking place and investors’ interest in board oversight of ESG matters. Findings in this report are based on data from an online survey conducted between December 2021 and February 2022. Click here to download the report >> Key findings Almost half (43 percent) of respondents say their full board has primary oversight…
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The week in GRC: Group aims to keep state pension funds away from ESG and Musk joins Twitter’s board
This week’s governance, compliance and risk-management stories from around the web – The New York Times reported that a judge on April 1 struck down a California law requiring diversity on boards. In response to a lawsuit brought by conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, Judge Terry Green of Los Angeles County Superior Court found that the law violated the state constitution. The law, Assembly Bill 979, went into effect in 2020. It requires publicly traded companies based in California to have board members from under-represented communities including people of several races and ethnic groups and people who identify as gay,…
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Insurers Chubb, Travelers and The Hartford face climate proposals
Proponent seeking underwriting practices that do not support new fossil fuel supplies Facebook parent Meta Platforms appears set to face a shareholder vote regarding its much-discussed shift into new virtual technologies. In the company’s words: ‘Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.’ Facebook founder, chair and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a letter announcing the new company name and strategy last October: ‘The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence – like you are right there with another person or…
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Advanced Energy hires new general counsel
Elizabeth Vonne to join from life sciences company Mesa Laboratories The SEC has rejected an effort by insurer Chubb to exclude from its proxy statement what proponent Green Century Capital Management describes as ‘a landmark climate proposal.’ The agency’s decision was repeated shortly thereafter regarding the same proposal as filed with The Hartford Financial Services Group and The Travelers Companies. Specifically, Green Century’s proposal requests that Chubb’s board ‘adopt and disclose new policies to help ensure that its underwriting practices do not support new fossil fuel supplies, in alignment with the [International Energy Agency’s (IEA)] Net Zero Emissions by 2050…
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Facebook parent faces vote on road into the metaverse
Proponent seeking report on ‘potential psychological and civil and human rights harms’ Nasdaq-listed Advanced Energy has recruited Elizabeth Vonne as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, effective April 15. She will report to president and CEO Steve Kelley. Vonne will join Advanced Energy from life sciences company Mesa Laboratories, where she has been vice president for legal, general counsel and secretary. Before her time with Mesa Laboratories, she was a partner at law firm Davis Graham & Stubbs and earlier in her career was an associate with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. Vonne will succeed Tom McGimpsey (pictured),…
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New tools monitor executive sentiment through voice analysis
Around 40 percent of information provided by spoken words is conveyed through tone Sentiment analysis has become a mainstream tool for investors and today, when your earnings call transcript is published, AI models scan the text to identify which sections appear more positive or negative. The information can be piped straight into trading strategies or used as a basis for further investigation. At the cutting edge of this work is an attempt to glean insight directly from the audio of the call. As we all know,howyou say something can be just as important as – if not more important than…