Reporting & ESG
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‘We believe many ESG-driven decisions lack objectivity’: NLPC director Paul Chesser on why companies should shun culture-war activism
For more than two decades, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) has positioned itself as a prominent conservative watchdog challenging what it sees as the growing politicization of corporate America. As director of the organization’s Corporate Integrity Project – an initiative that uses shareholder proposals and public campaigns to target corporations it believes are adopting excessively progressive policies – Paul Chesser embodies that mission.
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Why stocks fall after earnings: The hidden power of tone, language and sentiment
Every quarter, many public companies face an all too familiar – and deeply frustrating – script: strong results, solid guidance, yet the stock price declines the moment results hit and the pressure continues through the next one or two trading sessions.
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US boards answer to all shareholders, not just the loudest ones
There is a growing habit – mostly American, often loud – of treating ESG as a single cultural package: climate, DEI and whatever social flashpoint dominates the cycle. It makes for sharp copy. It is also a category error in the markets where stewardship decisions are actually made. In the UK and EU, ESG is regulated process: rules, disclosures and supervisory expectations designed to surface financially material sustainability risks. Think less ‘cause’, more ‘cash flow’. Across the UK and Europe, faith-based investing has long been expressed through formal, responsible-investment practice rather than culture-war branding. Since the 18th century, Church and…
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‘You sit down with tax collectors and prostitutes’: How Bowyer Research is reshaping proxy voting on the right
Bowyer Research first came to the attention of IR Impact – and many on the mainstream governance scene – when the firm’s ESG-skeptic voting policies were picked up by ISS. Today, those policies are available through all the major proxy voting advisory firms and Bowyer Research, which is essentially a mom-and-pop (plus kids) shop run out of Pennsylvania, advises many millions of dollars, including the $57 bn Texas Permanent School Fund. Jerry Bowyer, co-founded Bowyer Research with Susan, his wife of 31 years, , feels the right is playing catch up when it comes to equities and proxy voting –…
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Use of the word ‘diversity’ in corporate disclosures drops sharply in 2025, research shows
New disclosure data shows how quickly corporate language can shift as boards respond to legal, regulatory and investor pressure Only 36 percent of the top 100 US companies mentioned the word ‘diversity’ in human capital management disclosures – compared to 96 percent who did so in 2024 – according to a new report which demonstrates […]
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A material focus: BlackRock refocuses its 2026 voting stance in a tumultuous proxy landscape
BlackRock’s updates its stewardship expectations for 2026 following criticism of its decarbonization plans in New York BlackRock will renew its focus on long-term financial performance and take a more pragmatic approach to environmental policies at investee companies in 2026, according to its updated US Stewardship guidelines for 2026, as proxy advisers and companies continue to […]
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Beyond the quarter: Rethinking corporate reporting in the US
Amid a growing debate over the future of quarterly reporting, experts are weighing what a slower cadence of disclosure could mean As policymakers and corporate leaders debate the future of quarterly financial reporting in the US, a significant shift looms over how public companies communicate with investors and how they are held accountable. Beginning in […]
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What makes an equity narrative compelling? An investor survey offers clear perspective
In today’s competitive capital markets, crafting a compelling equity narrative is more than a communications exercise; it is a strategic imperative. But what distinguishes the enduring from the generic? BNY’s Market Insights and Initiatives team, in partnership with S&P Global, surveyed 40 institutional investors across six continents, representing $2 trillion in equity assets under management, to answer this question.
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As Trump signs executive order targeting ISS and Glass Lewis, experts say change is already happening
‘Unbeknownst to many Americans, two foreign-owned proxy advisors, ISS and Glass Lewis, play a significant role in shaping the policies and priorities of America’s largest companies through the shareholder voting process,’ wrote US President Donald Trump on Thursday as – after weeks of rumor – he signed an executive order targeting the two firms. In it, Trump advises everyone from the SEC to the Federal Trade Commission, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor to put a regulatory spotlight on the big two. The rhetoric leading up to the signing was fierce: SEC chairman Paul Atkins talked about the ‘weaponization…
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Glass Lewis tightens US oversight of board powers in broader 2026 proxy rethink
Glass Lewis released its 2026 Benchmark Policy Guidelines on December 5, setting out notable changes for its policies for companies in the US, Canada, the UK and continental Europe. The updated guidelines, which apply to shareholder meetings held after 1 January 2026, indicate a shift away from rigid, uniform voting prescriptions and towards one with more customization and sees proxy advisors act more as research providers than as standard setters.
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Do ISS and Glass Lewis have too much influence? Yes, say most – but that doesn’t mean it’s not political
I’ve spent much of the past week having conversations with governance people – and one very small proxy advisory firm – about their takes on the debate raging around the influence of the big two: ISS and Glass Lewis. Recent weeks have seen talk of the ‘weaponization of shareholder proposals’; Elon Musk has famously described them as ‘corporate terrorists’; the Wall Street Journal reported that US President Donald Trump is considering an executive order to curb the power of the proxy advisors, as well as the fact that these two behemoths are facing an anti-trust investigation for their roles in…
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Tesla: How do you get support for a $1 trn pay package? Give shareholders a slice of the pie
ISS is recommending against Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $1 tn compensation package. Glass Lewis too. CalPERS and NBIM, manager of the world’s most valuable sovereign wealth fund, have each come out publicly against. But with the Tesla AGM happening today online and at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas, one small, family-run proxy advisory firm – whose ESG-skeptic voting guidelines are offered by ISS, and which boasted the $57 bn Texas Permanent School Fund as the first state fund to sign up – is backing Musk’s compensation. ‘We’re strongly focused on the alignment of incentives,’ says Jerry Bowyer, CEO of Bowyer Research, who…
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Philosophy and numbers: IR Impact briefing explores how AI is – and isn’t – changing earnings
‘Investors, analysts – everyone in financial markets – is consulting a vast amount of increasing data sources to inform their investment decisions,’ said Laurie Havelock, IR Impact editor, kicking off the recent briefing that brought together Jesse Rose, head of IR at Reddit, Dave Bezanson, vice president of IR and pensions at EMERA and Christopher Napolitano, account executive at AlphaSense, the event partner. While data opens up a world of insights, Havelock pointed to the added pressure it brings when IROs must distil everything that is out there into something they can deliver to the board. This, said Napolitano, is…
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The new era of sustainability reporting: global shifts, practical lessons and strategic opportunities
Sustainability reporting is entering a new era. Regulatory shifts, evolving standards and rising stakeholder expectations are reshaping the landscape, creating both challenges and opportunities for organizations worldwide. Demand for consistent, comparable and decision-useful information continues to push voluntary standards toward harmonization, while jurisdictions move closer to mandatory frameworks. The result: a reporting environment that is more complex, but also more transparent, globally aligned and investor-focused.
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With CSRD up for review, the time has come to reclaim the concept of sustainability
It started more as a form of activism, then developed into a trend that everyone would jump on before turning into a monster whose tamers have completely resigned. With European regulations and a zealous auditing spirit, companies’ sustainability work has been driven to be about decimal points and regulatory compliance, instead of adding shareholder value or social and environmental benefits. As the EU Commission says ‘stop, change and do things right’, the time has come for communicators and IROs to reclaim the concept of sustainability. When we write the history of corporate communication up to and into the 2010s, the…
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Where were the directors? Why investors want to know how boards act in a corporate scandal
When a corporate scandal breaks, the first question investors ask is Where were the directors? This phrase was coined by Peter Dey in 1994 when he led a report on how to improve corporate governance practices at Canadian listed companies. Corporate scandals have always existed and many stem from weak corporate governance, often caused by a lack of communication, insufficient internal controls or a very lax attitude towards potential problems. In 2024, the US administration criticized Boeing’s board for failing to adequately supervise the safety procedures of its aircraft, following several accidents involving its 737 Max model that resulted in…
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Despite any advantages, ditching quarterly reporting will ultimately place more burden on IR teams
After DE&I policies, sensible foreign trade policy and the SEC’s ability to enforce regulations, what’s the next thing in Donald Trump’s sights? Why, of course, it’s that scourge of the capital markets, quarterly reporting.
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Executive pay: Say-on-pay support stays steady and other lessons from the 2025 proxy season
With the 2025 North American proxy season now officially closed, emerging trends in executive compensation are offering valuable insights and shaping important considerations for boards going forward. Here, we explore some of these issues and ways boards and management teams can start to incorporate these into planning for next year’s shareholder meeting.
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Despite political noise, the stats clearly show the anti-DEI movement does not have shareholder support
The movement fell flat in 2025’s proxy season with most proposals receiving less than 2 percent investor backing Shareholders sent companies a clear message this proxy season: anti-DEI proposals do not have their backing. At 30 of the largest US companies, together worth over $13 trn, every anti-DEI proposal was rejected, with most receiving less than […]
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How the SEC’s ‘pendulum swing’ has realigned rules with market realities this proxy season
DE&I, ESG proposals trends and regulatory changes take center stage at Governance Intelligence briefing How is the proxy season evolving? During a recent Governance Intelligence briefing on Lessons from the 2025 Proxy Season – held in partnership with BetaNXT – Amanda Thrash, senior counsel and assistant corporate secretary at The Williams Companies, said that DE&I issues were still of […]
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Corporate art: The annual report as an object of design
Annual reports serve a legal purpose – to report on a company’s accounts and operations. But it has also become a graphic object that describes the company’s narrative in both words and design. The report is a central part of ‘telling the company story’, its business and sometimes the investment case, while also satisfying the needs of governance hawks. Using Sthlm Kom, we take a closer look at what graphic and design trends we can see in this ‘dry corporate document’ over the last 20 years.
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All wrapped up: how Deutsche EuroShop sparked conversation with AI action figures
What did it take to turn Patrick Kiss, IR Impact Award-winning investor relations lead at Deutsche EuroShop, into a fully boxed action figure? Well, it needs a spark of creativity, a ChatGPT Pro account plus a lot of patience. ‘To give you an idea of the work involved, the final optimized prompt for my own action figure had 304 words in 66 lines with more than 2,200 characters,’ says Kiss. This is something of a side step from the usual conversations around AI for IR, where the focus is on saving time for IROs paddling against the current of increasing…
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Five reasons why public companies should conduct post-shareholder meeting engagement
The annual shareholder meeting marks a major milestone for public companies – but it is not the finish line. Instead, it offers a starting point for deeper, more meaningful shareholder engagement throughout the rest of the year.
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‘Earnings are our Super Bowl halftime show’: Tales from 100 quarterly updates with Mary Winn Pilkington
Earlier this year, Tractor Supply Company (TSC)’s Mary Winn Pilkington celebrated her 100th earnings call – with balloons, cake and the typical quarterly stress to match. ‘In IR you touch on everything – that’s probably part of the reason I have stayed in investor relations for 25 years,’ she says. ‘Every day is different and you get to work with the smartest people inside the company. ‘You’re working with people that are on the board or the management team, you’re working with high potential individuals that have been given strategic projects to work on,’ she adds. ‘Then, outside of the…
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The sustainability Taliban, the eco right and why we need a new language for ESG: down the rabbit hole with Robert Eccles
When Robert Eccles wrote a piece called Grift capitalism: The GOP’s brilliant strategy for ripping off ordinary Americans, it received the usual dose of online hate mail. It also led to a challenge: if you can find a conservative that thinks sustainability is good for capital markets, will you stop ‘writing nasty stuff’ about Republicans? That led him to the position he speaks from today: a liberal ex-hippy who has found common ground with the so-called ‘eco right’. Eccles, a well-known author and lecturer who has been writing about non-financial metrics since the early 1970s, had already become frustrated with…
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‘You have to get your statements absolutely right’: EQ Group’s Jo Palmer on IR adapting to AI
Among the most-entered awards at the IR Impact Awards – US 2025 were those that recognized company’s innovations in communicating with shareholders. With more and more investors and analysts using AI to fuel their processes, IR teams are having to adapt their disclosures to be read well by virtual eyes.
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Talking DEI under Trump 2.0: how anti-woke investors are hijacking pro-ESG proposals
What does DEI mean to you? Here at IR Impact, we’ve stopped spelling out diversity, equity and inclusion, working under the assumption that this most tricky of news items is known to all. But it seems that other interpretations exist – on the White House official X account for example, where a post was recently put out stating ‘the only DEI we support is Deport Every Illegal’. That very much sums up the kind of narrative companies are up against with today’s very public broadly anti-ESG and specifically anti-DEI rhetoric.
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Press send with confidence: how regulatory news can be made easier
Sending a regulatory release isn’t just a click — it’s the final moment in a multi-step process, often involving many stakeholders, with compliance, formatting and timing all needing to align. In that final second before pressing send, one question often lingers: Are we sure everything is right?
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ESG: Over or in it for the long haul? IR Impact Forum takes debate to Canada
Whether ESG is over or increasingly relevant, in need of reform or greater standardization is the great debate. Has the term become too ‘woke’? Is it too much of a political hot potato? Does good ESG equate to better share price performance, or has it been hijacked under the pretense of improving returns? Prabh Banga of Aecon Group (left) and Jack Mintz from the University of Calgary (middle) debate ESG with IR Impact’s Steve Wade These were the topics up for debate when Prabh Banga, vice president of sustainability at Aecon Group and Jack Mintz, president’s fellow of the school…
