Damning the statistics
Top executives swapping insults is obviously what Board Agenda is here for. So imagine our excitement this week when Elon Musk responded to Richard Edelman, head of the world’s largest PR company. Edelman had been filmed at Davos saying “deprive [social media] platforms that spread disinformation of oxygen. Stop advertising—pull your promotion money…”.
Musk, who recently sank $46bn into buying Twitter, was clearly not happy. “Edelman is a despicable human being—his job is literally being a professional liar,” he tweeted.
Funnily enough, the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, overseen by Mr Edelman, this year found that business was the only trusted group when compared to NGOs, government and the media. So there’s that.
Talk is cheap—and effective
OK, board members: want to know the importance of certain kinds of info to decisions made by investors assessing risks and opportunities?
Well, the PwC Global Investor Survey 2022 has got the lowdown. Top of the leaderboard is old-school financial reporting, with an 89% ranking. But dialogue with the company follows closely behind on 81%. In third place is narrative reporting, closely followed by third-party data sources at 79%.
Now, far be it from us to tell you how to do your jobs but it seems like the nearly the best way to reassure your investors is to… talk to them. Anyone for lunch?
US: the rush to hush
The culture wars continue stateside. This time, Republican governors have attacked proxy advisers, ISS and Glass Lewis, alleging they have broken their “contractual obligations” in acting for state investment vehicles with proxy voting advice based on “net zero” pledges, “disclosure of climate-related risks” and—shockingly—the Paris Agreement. The claims come in a letter, running to 11 pages, signed by 21 attorneys general.
This week, during a Davos broadcast, Board Agenda, for the first time, came across the term “green hushing”, the process by which some interested parties attempt to shut down the climate change or sustainability agenda, or at least drive it into secret corners. Can’t imagine how we managed to connect these two events.
BlackRock speaks up for sustainability
On that note, a warning from BlackRock this week that it will vote against board directors it believes have failed in their duty to manage “material sustainability-related risks and opportunities”, or fallen short in considering “employees, clients, suppliers and the communities within which they operate”.
In a note written for the Harvard Law School governance blog, BlackRock governance supremos Sandy Boss and Michelle Edkins write: “Where a company has not adequately disclosed and demonstrated that they have fulfilled these responsibilities, we will consider voting against re-election of directors whom we consider to have particular responsibility for the issue.”
Considering the flak BlackRock has taken for its ESG focus, and the claims that it is part of the “woke” liberal agenda, that’s a powerful statement.