Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, joins the podcast to discuss the power of using shareholder advocacy to drive change at large corporations. Andrew walks us through “a day in the life,” specifically May 25, 2022, when his team presented resolutions at five corporate annual meetings on issues ranging from climate change to racial justice; Andrew talks about the SEC’s new draft rule that addresses the ESG naming problem within mutual funds; and the paradox of employees unknowingly investing in companies that are destroying the Amazon through company retirement plans. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowJune 23, 2022homepage, Andrew Behar, ESG, Amazon

As You Sow Uses KPIs And Data To Help Shareholders Advocate For Long-Term Corporate Change

Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, says companies that adopt a stakeholder capitalism framework to benefit more than just shareholders will create lasting value for all stakeholders and strengthen the bottom line. “If it’s good for the employees; good for the customers; good for the community; and good for the supply chain; it’s generally good for the business, which means it’s good for shareholders,” he told me during a recent conversation as part of my research on purpose-driven business. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowJune 7, 2022homepage, Andrew Behar

An Open letter to Larry Fink: How Your CEO Letter Requires a Few Tweaks

Andrew Behar once again pens a letter to BlackRock’s CEO.

I particularly appreciate the creation of the “Center for Stakeholder Capitalism” as it answers the request As You Sow made in two shareholder resolutions for an implementation plan of the Business Roundtable pledge. This is exactly what we were looking for. You have my gratitude and personal offer to assist in any way to, “bring together leading CEOs, investors, policy experts, and academics to share their experience and deliver their insights”.

Shareholder Advocacy, Invest Your ValuesAs You SowJanuary 24, 2022homepage, Andrew Behar

Shareholders Press Facebook for Governance Changes

As You Sow, a nonprofit, filed a shareholder proposal calling for greater board oversight of efforts to reduce harmful user-generated content. “Shareholders need to understand why these technological solutions continue to fail to protect civil society,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow.

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowDecember 13, 2021homepage, Andrew Behar

New SEC guidance emboldens shareholder activists as 2022 proxy season ramps up

"What that did was make it very difficult to bring reasonable proposals and to address issues of concern, like climate change, in a way that really moved the issue forward," said Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel of As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowNovember 16, 2021Karin Rives, shareholder advocacy, sec rule, homepage

US Shareholders Better Able to Push Social, Environmental Scrutiny

Shareholder advocacy non-profit As You Sow also welcomed the change, with the organisation’s President, Danielle Fugere, calling it a “timely and necessary” move which would help shareholders play a “critical role in ensuring companies are addressing issues that create risk and opportunity and can affect shareholder value”. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowNovember 8, 2021homepage, Emmy Hawker, SEC, sec rule, sec vote

SEC Loosens Constraints On Some Shareholder Resolutions

“This guidance, which underscores the [right of] shareholders to raise and vote on important issues, is timely and necessary,” Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, said in a statement. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowNovember 4, 2021Karen DeMasters, SEC, sec rule, sec vote

Biden ESG Push Converges With Steps to Spur Competition

“As You Sow and the shareholders we represent believe that corporations need to disclose greater detail about their policies and practices to include material environmental, social, and governance” data, Behar said. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowOctober 12, 2021Andrew Ramonas, Siri Bulusu, SEC, esg, esg funds, sec rule, sec vote, shareholder advocacy

The SEC, and ESG advocates, want to know how well companies are treating their workers

In recent years, both the World Economic Forum and Business Roundtable, pre-Covid, embraced stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism to the exclusion of every other interest. Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, which has taken on many companies over the years in proxy battles focused on ESG issues, says the tide it not turning back to Milton Friedman’s view of the world. Read More →

Shareholder Advocacy, CEO PayAs You SowAugust 20, 2021Eric Rosenbaum, shareholder advocacy, CEO Pay, ceo pay, wage, ESG

Investors sue U.S. regulator over Trump-era AGM resolution rules

“This was a political rulemaking not warranted by the record or the evidence,” said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a California shareholder activist group and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowJune 15, 2021Ross Kerber, sec 14a-8 rule, shareholder advocacy

A Glimpse of a Future With True Shareholder Democracy

“The big fund companies have a massive aggregation of power that comes from the investments of their shareholders,” said Andrew Behar, chief executive of As You Sow. “At the very least, the fund companies shouldn’t be allowed to vote if they have conflicts of interest.” Read More →

SEC Votes to Restrict Shareholder Proposals

Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, noted that the SEC vote “comes at a time when shareholders are appropriately acknowledging — and asking their companies to address — a wide range of social and environmental issues that have the potential to harm our environment, economy, and companies’ value. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAsYouSowSeptember 28, 2020Bernice Napach, sec rule, shareholder advocacy

SEC approves rule that investing advocates say will ‘crush shareholder voices’ and curbs some whistleblower paydays

“The SEC’s rule demonstrates a failure to comprehend that [Environmental, Social and Governance] issues, including climate change, increasingly have material impacts on company value,” said Andrew Behar of As You Sow, a nonprofit, ESG-issue expert that often represents shareholders on a range of material issues. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAsYouSowSeptember 28, 2020sec rule, shareholder advocacy, Rachel Koning Beals, homepage

Trump Administration Seeks to Muzzle Activist Shareholders

Corporate boards, on the other hand, don’t tend to share the same appreciation. Companies aren’t as comfortable having explosive concerns aired in “the public eye…where they cannot necessarily control what is said about them,” says Welsh, whose organization produces the Proxy Preview with the nonprofit shareholder activist organization As You Sow and Proxy Impact, a shareholder advocacy and proxy voting service. Read More →

US companies shift to online annual shareholder meetings due to coronavirus

As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar believes that a discussion he had with one of the board members of Monster Beverage Corp. during a coffee break at the company's 2018 annual general meeting was the catalyst behind Monster's decision several months later to work with As You Sow to study and publish a slavery and human trafficking report on its sugarcane supply chain and start on the path to addressing those issues. The related resolution had received only 20% support at the 2018 meeting. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowApril 6, 2020Esther Whieldon, shareholder advocacy, agm

Business Roundtable members face challenge over commitments

Companies including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock will be forced to confront accusations of hypocrisy at their upcoming shareholder meetings from investors challenging commitments made by corporate America to consider the environment and their workers alongside profitability. Read More →

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup forced to accept proposals on Business Roundtable pledges

Three titans of US banking and investment had their requests to omit shareholder proposals on implementing the Business Roundtable Statement of the Purpose of a Corporation slapped back by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday. Read More →

Opposition to SEC Proxy Proposals Grows

Green America, a not-for-profit membership organization focused on the economic power of consumers, investors and businesses to create an environmentally sustainable economy, along with Americans for Financial Reform and As You Sow, delivered the petition. Read More →

18,000 Signatures Delivered Urging SEC Not to Muzzle Voice of Shareholders

Green America, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and As You Sow delivered the signatures today to the SEC at its Washington, D.C., offices at 100 F Street NE. Signatures also were gathered by Public Citizen and Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). Read More →

Blackrock seeks to dodge proposal on Business Roundtable commitments

Blackrock has become the latest US financial giant seeking to evade a shareholder proposal calling on it to outline how it will make good on its recent Business Roundtable commitments. Read More →

Shareholder AdvocacyAs You SowJanuary 27, 2020Paul Verney, BlackRock