rezonanz

Happy holidays from the rezonanz team! A big thank you to all our clients, partners, formal & informal advisors, friends, and followers for your support this year. Together, we’ve made 2024 a year of growth and impact. Cheers to a bolder and brighter 2025! 🥂

I'm excited to attend the Building Bridges 2024 Conference this week, where Patrick Odier has beautifully framed the themes for the week as "stay the course, collaborate, and focus on solutions:" our engagement data-sharing pilot fits in perfectly. Over the past month, we’ve reached out to dozens of investors privately to invite participation in a first-of-its-kind pilot to share engagement records on an anonymized basis. Some yeses, some nos: we’ll explore the reasons for this in 2025. Participants can choose to start by sharing the list of companies engaged in 2023 or go further by providing details on the topics and targets of their engagements. 💡 Why does this matter? Dozens of leading investors already disclose their engagement lists publicly. With the public and proprietary engagement data we’re collecting, we are building a global engagement overview that enables investors to compare their targets with others to gain new insights. To find out more about the pilot's theory of change and to sign-up to participate, visit our dedicated page: https://lnkd.in/gGe3hKfg

We're tracking the growing trend of investors pre-disclosing their proxy votes. With Microsoft's Annual Meeting of Shareholders less than 48 hours away, we analyzed the pre-disclosures of 11 major investors and grouped them by their Voting for Sustainability quartiles (4 is high, 1 is low). Some clear patterns emerge: support for shareholder proposals increases across the quartiles, reflecting a sustained focus on sustainability issues among higher-scoring investors. However, the say-on-pay and auditor ratification votes reveal notable differences across all quartiles. (As for the Bitcoin proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research—its chances of passing look slim.) We're building these pre-disclosures into our existing proxy voting analysis and monitoring tools for the 2025 AGM season. Sign up for our newsletter today to find out when pre-disclosures are live: https://lnkd.in/gztESETw

🌟 We are delighted to welcome Dr. Emilio Marti as an advisor to rezonanz! 📚 Dr. Marti, Associate Professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, is a leading expert in corporate sustainability and sustainable investing. His groundbreaking research explores how sustainable investing influences corporate sustainability, making him a globally recognized authority on shareholder engagement. 🏆 With a distinguished career that includes roles at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Bayes Business School in London, Emilio holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. His award-winning work has been featured in top academic journals like Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science and has reached wider audiences through outlets like the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review. 🔬 At rezonanz, Emilio will leverage his expertise in qualitative analysis to strengthen our understanding of investor impact. His insights will help ensure our tools empower investors to drive meaningful, measurable change. 💡 We are excited to collaborate with Emilio to advance the field of sustainable investing and support investors in achieving real-world outcomes. https://lnkd.in/gTb_wzBf  Please join us in giving a warm welcome to Emilio as we continue to drive responsible investing forward and check out his HBR article, "A More Impactful Strategy for Sustainable Investing": https://lnkd.in/gebd2NwB

On Tuesday we hosted a 30' webinar deep-diving into the methodology behind Voting for Sustainability & what rezonanz offers. We welcomed an engaged and diverse audience of asset managers, pension funds and responsible investment organizations. The Q&A featured a number of interesting questions from "what are the coverage constraints prohibiting smaller asset managers from being ranked?" to "how can you measure the meaning of say-on-climate votes appropriately?" to "how do you integrate engagement efforts within your assessment framework?" We'll be sharing individual answers to these questions in the weeks to come, so a big thank you to our engaged participants. For those who couldn't make it, you can contact us directly for a recording of the webinar or download the report via https://lnkd.in/gxWMxus7

How do better metrics bring deeper insights? Until now, proxy voting’s role in sustainability stewardship has been measured by simple metrics, from “% of portfolio voted” to “% of shareholder proposals supported” or “% votes against management.” But proxy voting is more complex than that. Especially amidst the rising tide of anti-ESG proposals, it’s important to note that not all shareholder proposals are “good:” they vary significantly. Additionally, a growing body of research shows that votes against board can be even more effective in driving improvements in corporate sustainability. “Voting for Sustainability” presents a new perspective on diverging votes at diverse meetings: in the heatmap below you can see the voting behavior of 75 asset managers across the 428 benchmark proposals (from both shareholder and management) flagged by the nine responsible investment organizations in our benchmark. What does it tell us? 💡 The diversity of voting patterns across proposals and managers highlights the nuance behind proxy voting choices. 💡 It's clear that simple metrics like "% agreement" fail to capture these subtleties. We're going beyond to identify true sustainability leaders: 🌿 To truly assess investors’ alignment with sustainability, we applied a robust quantitative methodology that goes beyond % support. ☑️ This framework evaluates voting behavior across a curated set of sustainability-relevant proposals and benchmarks them against sustainability principles, to go beyond “box-checking metrics” How do we do it?  🔜 Join us on our webinar to find out more: https://lnkd.in/g2UcwsCZ 📑 Download our 2024 report to dive deeper: https://lnkd.in/gxWMxus7

"Voting for Sustainability" ranked 77 asset managers and 63 pension funds on a set of 428 sustainability-relevant votes from 2024. As you can see in the box plot below, sustainability alignment varies widely: while pension funds in the aggregate are outperforming, in both investor groups we have a wide range of scores. We're tagging the ranked asset managers and pension funds in this post and the comments section. Investors' managing over $4 trillion in assets have already registered as rezonanz members. You can join them to view your ranks and benchmark your performance against peers on this key facet of stewardship directly: app.rezonanz.io We look forward to sharing further insights and implications on our webinar this Tuesday: https://lnkd.in/gCp9ZGUC

The wait is over! 🚀 Today we launch our global "Voting for Sustainability" ranking. At rezonanz, we've delved deep into the 2024 proxy voting records of 140 asset managers and pension funds worldwide to reveal how they're leveraging their voting power to promote sustainable corporate practices. Our innovative methodology—drawing on analytical techniques adapted from political science—uncovers the commitment of investors to sustainability, based on their actual voting actions on sustainability-relevant proposals. Congratulations to the top five leaders in sustainability-aligned voting: 🏆        BCV - Banque Cantonale Vaudoise Asset Management 🥈        BNP Paribas Asset Management 🥉        Trillium Asset Management 🎖️        Irish Life Investment Managers 🎖️        Christian Brothers Investment Services These organizations set a benchmark for proxy voting practices and showcase the powerful role investors can play in driving corporate change. Sustainability-relevant proposals comprised flagged votes from: Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) As You Sow Climate Action 100+ Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Majority Action ShareAction The Shareholder Commons & voting recommendations from Ethos Foundation (Switzerland) PIRC Limited Curious about where you or your peers stand? Visit our website to explore the full ranking, access tailored insights into voting behaviors via our app, and download the report deep-diving into our measurement methodology. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gnsk8NvF To read the full news release: 👉 https://lnkd.in/ggB9WxDp rezonanz is not just stimulating competition: we’re pioneering collaborative approaches to create meaningful investor impact—follow us to stay tuned!

Tomorrow at 9am CET, we're unveiling our pioneering global "Voting for Sustainability" ranking! After months of building up data pipelines, matching algorithms and analyzing the proxy voting behavior of over 140 leading asset managers and pension funds worldwide, we're ready to share fresh insights into how investors are driving corporate sustainability performance forward. We've employed innovative analytical methods to quantitatively benchmark investors against peers on 428 sustainability-relevant proposals at company meetings worldwide. These proposals were flagged by Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) As You Sow Climate Action 100+ Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Majority Action ShareAction The Shareholder Commons & with voting recommendations from Ethos Foundation (Switzerland) and PIRC Limited. We often hear "not all shareholder proposals are created equal:" more info about the consensus benchmark composition and topics areas scored is attached. Stay tuned for a new perspective in responsible investing set to spark meaningful conversations & sign up to our December 3rd webinar to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gCp9ZGUC

🌟 We are proud to welcome Professor Roni Michaely, a global expert in corporate finance and corporate governance, as an advisor to rezonanz! 🌍 📚 Professor Michaely is a distinguished Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) Business School. His pioneering research has shaped best practices in corporate finance, and he serves as: -Founding Executive Director of the HKU Tel-Aviv Innovation Hub -Co-director of the HKU Jockey Club Enterprise Sustainability Global Research Institute -Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) 📰 Featured in publications from The Wall Street Journal to the The Economist, his groundbreaking work bridges academic excellence and practical innovation. With entrepreneurial experience—co-founding two startups and advising several others—Professor Michaely brings invaluable insights and expertise to support rezonanz’s mission: empowering investors to drive meaningful change. Join us in warmly welcoming Professor Michaely to the rezonanz community as we work together to shape the future of responsible investing! 🌍💼 https://lnkd.in/g88bbXwh