Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Religious Shareholder Activism an Inside Job to Harm Companies and Investors
Religious Shareholder Activism an Inside Job to Harm Companies and Investors
Oct 17, 2026 11:52 AM

The Manhattan Institute Centers’s “Proxy Monitor Season Wrap-Up” is hot off the press, and the findings presented by author James R. Copland, are remarkable.

Since 2011, MIC has monitored shareholder activism, which it describes as efforts “in which investors attempt to influence corporate management through the shareholder-proposal process.” This year’s wrap-up includes MIC-researched data from corporations’ annual meetings held by the end of June 2015. By that time, “216 of the 250 largest panies by revenues” pleted their meetings, which enable long-term shareholders owning $2,000 of equity securities to introduce proxy resolutions.

Among these proxy activists are As You Sow, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility – groups with religious backgrounds and decidedly leftist ideological agendas – and a host of likeminded crusaders of progressive causes:

Among social investors, only As You Sow introduced more than five proposals in 2015 (seven). Many other socially oriented investors sponsored multiple proposals, however: social-investing platforms Arjuna Capital (three), Domini Social Investments (three), Green Century Capital Management (three), Investor Voice (five), Northstar Asset Management (two), Trillium Asset Management (four), and Walden Asset Management (four); religious investors Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes (two), Sisters of Mercy (five), Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order (two), Sisters of St. Dominic (two), Sisters of St. Francis (three), and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (two); the public-policy group National Center for Public Policy Research (two); and the Nathan Cummings (two) and Park (three) charitable foundations.

According to Copland’s report, religious shareholder activists were responsible for 29 percent of all resolutions submitted to the 216 Fortune panies. What type of proposals did the nuns, clergy and other religious submit? According to Copland:

As was the case in 2006–14, shareholder proposals relating to social or policy concerns constituted a plurality of all such proposals in 2015 (43 percent). Close behind were proposals relating to corporate-governance issues (42 percent)….

As for subclasses of proposal, environmental concerns were introduced most often in 2015 (58 proposals). Proposals related to political spending or lobbying—the most-introduced subclass in 2012, 2013, and 2014—were the second-most numerous (49 proposals).

All told, social issues and policies accounted for 43 percent of all resolutions submitted. Yet none of them passed. Zero. Nought. Zed. Zilch. A big fat nothing:

No shareholder proposals related to social or policy issues received majority support—in keeping with each of the nine prior years in the ProxyMonitor.org database, when not a single social-policy-related shareholder proposal has received the support of a majority of shareholders over board opposition.

No harm, no foul, right? Not so fast. Copland continues:

To be sure, [carbon-intensive coal, oil and gas, and panies] may face peculiar regulatory risks, if rather obvious for energy and panies and their investors. (The risks that climate change itself may place on panies’ business models are too far in the future—and thus too discounted to present—to concern shareholders focused solely on share price, aside from sociopolitical or regulatory concerns.) Yet beyond changing their line of business or increasing lobbying or political activity, there is little that panies can do to mitigate such risks—and the former (but not the latter) would almost certainly be inimical [emphasis in original] to share value.

Got that? The 58 environmental proposals work in tandem with the 49 resolutions to curtail corporate political spending when es to reducing shareholder value. Let’s put it this way, any pany would lose value if plied with the activist shareholder agenda regarding climate change. The same pany also would lose value if it didn’t invest in lobbying efforts in pany’s – and its investors’ (not to mention customers’ and employees’) – best interests. Such lobbying includes countering astronomically expensive government bureaucratic emission-reduction edicts and regulations with little or no empirical proof such measures will result in any positive difference.

Inimical indeed. Yet, religious shareholder activism trundles on unabated, its crusade an inside job to harm corporate profitability and shareholder value. It’s shameful and antithetical to any concept of moral principles promulgated by any major religion with which this writer is familiar. More’s the pity.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The Catholic Church And Labor Unions: Belonging To The Former Does Not Mean Membership To The Latter
In places like Chicago, ties between unions and Catholics often run deep. However, with right-to-work ing a voting issue in many states, the intersection of union membership and church membership is ing a hot topic. Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich got himself tangled in this arena this week: At the request of local unions, Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich recently spoke at a West Side union hall about the church’s teachings on work and workers. After the speech, Democrat House Speaker Michael...
Does Bitcoin Have an Energy Problem?
Over the past couple of years I’ve fallen into a habit of infrequently pointing out the flaws, dangers, and threats to Bitcoin as a viable cryptocurrency. While I find the experiment in alternative currency intriguing, I’m just as intrigued by criticisms made against Bitcoin. Even if Bitcoin ultimately fails, it will provide numerous valuable lessons about peer-based innovation, and the criticisms that were warranted can help us avoid pitfalls in the future. We won’t know, of course, which criticisms are...
Video: Arthur Brooks On The Conservative Heart
The Fall 2016 Acton Lecture Series continued on October 1st with an address by American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks, who spoke on the topic of his latest book,The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America. Conservatives are often vexed by the fact that liberal policies and their supporters are viewed by the public as passionate to the poor even thougha great deal of evidence exists to show thatthat liberal “solutions” to any number of...
Wasteful Extravagance: Sara Groves on the Economy of Wonder  
“God somehow demands of us so much more than this transactional nature. It is really about the gift that we’ve been given, and the only response we can give back is with extravagance, with gratuitous beauty.” –Makoto Fujimura (Episode 6,For the Life of the World) We live in a society that has grown increasingly transactional in its way of thinking. Everything we spend or steward — time, money, relationships — must secure a personal reward or return. Even when we...
5 Facts About Nobel-winning Economist Angus Deaton
Earlier today the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that theNobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to economist Angus Deaton. Here are five facts about Deaton and his work: 1.Angus Deaton, aged 69, is a dual British and American citizen. In Britain he taught CambridgeUniversityand the UniversityofBristol. In America he is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University....
Religious Shareholder Activism an Inside Job to Harm Companies and Investors
The Manhattan Institute Centers’s “Proxy Monitor Season Wrap-Up” is hot off the press, and the findings presented by author James R. Copland, are remarkable. Since 2011, MIC has monitored shareholder activism, which it describes as efforts “in which investors attempt to influence corporate management through the shareholder-proposal process.” This year’s wrap-up includes MIC-researched data from corporations’ annual meetings held by the end of June 2015. By that time, “216 of the 250 largest panies by revenues” pleted their meetings, which...
There is No Such Thing as ‘The Poor’
“With the news this week that Angus Deaton of Princeton University had won the economics Nobel,” says Victor V. Claar in this week’s Acton Commentary, “the question of how best to help the poor in developing nations takes on a greater level of urgency.” When es to understanding the specifics of global poverty, Deaton’s achievements are especially impressive. By pioneering household surveys in poor countries, he helped us gain a more accurate perspective on living standards and the particular consumption...
Laudato Energy Abundance
While it has been pointed out repeatedly by your writer and others in this space that Pope Francis’ Laudato Si contains much to mend it for the passion and depth of spirituality contained within, there remains much that is problematic. For example, there’s this: At the same time we can note the rise of a false or superficial ecology which placency and a cheerful recklessness. As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted...
State Department Report on Religious Freedom Highlights Christian Persecution
Yesterday the State Department released its International Religious Freedom Report for 2014. A wide range of U.S. government agencies and offices use the reports for such efforts as shaping policy and conducting diplomacy. The Secretary of State also uses the reports to help determine which countries have engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe violations” of religious freedom in order to designate “countries of particular concern.” A major concern addressed in this year’s report is the violent opposition to religious freedom...
6 Quotes: Angus Deaton on Poverty
Yesterday, Princeton economist Angus Deaton won the Nobel prize in economic sciences for his work on “analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” In honor of this recognition, here are six quotes by Deaton on poverty: On poverty measurements: “Poverty lines are as much political as scientific constructions.” On measuring global poverty: “Measuring poverty at the local level is straightforward, at the national level it is hard but manageable, but at the level of the world as a whole it is...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved