Proxy Preview 2025: Materiality Over Politics Drives Shareholder Resilience
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Ryon Harms, ryon@asyousow.org, (310) 730-9407
Proxy Preview 2025: Materiality Over Politics Drives Shareholder Resilience
Responsible shareholders take measured approach to score strategic wins amid political headwinds and unpopular anti-ESG resolutions.
EL CERRITO, CALIFORNIA—APRIL 3, 2025—Today, Proxy Preview 2025, a comprehensive annual review of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) shareholder proposals was released by As You Sow and Proxy Impact. This 21st edition demonstrates continued tenacity by shareholders to highlight material risks and opportunities for companies in their portfolios, despite political efforts to limit the rights of shareholders and ESG considerations.
In 2025, 355 ESG-related shareholder proposals were filed. The top concerns were climate change - where 86 proposals were filed, predominantly asking companies about their climate transition plans and climate financing. Corporate political influence had 77 proposals calling for disclosure on lobbying and political influence.
The next largest categories were environmental management with 52 proposals, human rights with 37, and workforce diversity with 36. Shareholders also filed proposals to raise new issues beyond ongoing concerns from biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, child safety, and the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that lead to financial outperformance. New material concerns include asking insurers to disclose impact from rising climate risk on customers; for tech companies to report on climate transition plans for data centers; and for healthcare providers to assess security for medical data.
“Shareholders are considering issues with systemic impacts and are inquiring about their companies’ plans to navigate them in order to be best positioned for future profitability,” said Amy Galland, report co-author and principal at Empower Venture Partners. “We are seeing investors continuing to bring attention to broader materiality risks regardless of the political climate.”
With an about-face at the SEC on the 2024 climate disclosure rule and the SEC's omission of a lobbying disclosure resolution that has been filed at over 600 companies in the past 15 years, investor filings are a clear indication that these issues have material impact on their companies that they want management to address.
The new SEC has already issued rules that make it easier for companies to exclude shareholder proposals, while partisan state Attorneys General and legislatures have continued anti-business efforts to stop consideration of systemic risks. In addition, companies and shareholders are all in uncharted waters due to executive orders currently being litigated that aim to eliminate profitable DEI policies in the public and private sectors and promote the expansion of fossil fuels while suppressing more affordable renewables.
“The 2025 shareholder proposals demonstrate investor attention to a fundamental rule of business: decisions should be based on data and not driven by politics,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, publisher of Proxy Preview. “Shareholders have shown incredible resilience in the face of bad faith attacks because, as universal owners, we are affected by and want to reduce material risk for all stakeholders and help company executives put profit over politics.”
According to the report, there was a 34% drop in the number of shareholder proposals filed compared to 2024. “Shareholders have taken a wait-and-see approach, deciding not to file as many proposals this year until they see the direction of the new SEC," said Michael Passoff, CEO of Proxy Impact and co-author of Proxy Preview. “Another factor in the drop in filings is that more companies engaged in dialogue with shareholders in order to avoid the publicity surrounding politically charged issues.”
In 2025, the number of anti-ESG proposals continued to grow. Companies in the Russell 3000 saw 23 anti-ESG resolutions in 2021, 112 in 2024, and 62 as of March 2025. Shareholders have soundly rejected these politically driven, anti-business proposals, particularly for anti-DEI which were consistently and decisively defeated by near-unanimous votes.
Behar added, "As 98% and 99% votes against anti-DEI resolutions showed at Costco, Deere, Apple, and Disney, investors want their boards and management teams to continue to hire and promote based on merit to build a workforce dedicated to excellence and financial outperformance.”
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Proxy Preview is a collaboration between As You Sow and Proxy Impact. Proxy Preview provides the most comprehensive free data on hundreds of ESG shareholder resolutions on environmental, corporate political influence, human rights, diversity, and sustainable governance issues.