Financial Times | BP is facing a threat of legal action from activist climate investors who have accused the energy group of “an unprecedented attack on shareholder rights” over its refusal to include a resolution they filed for next month’s annual meeting.
The proposal calling on the company to set out strategies for maintaining shareholder value if oil and gas demand declines was filed in January by 16 institutional investors and a group of retail shareholders brought together by Follow This, a Dutch green investor group.
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Follow This chief executive Mark van Baal said BP’s move was a sign of how the battle over ESG and shareholder rights was spreading to Europe from the US, where there has been a crackdown on shareholder resolutions in recent years.
“BP is trying to silence its own shareholders rather than answering them,” he said, adding that the company’s refusal to allow the resolution to be voted on at the annual meeting was “an attack on shareholder rights”.
“This is unprecedented in the UK as far as we know,” he said. “It would have huge implications if BP can get away with it, because then every company can get away with it.”
A similar resolution at Shell had been accepted, van Baal said. Follow This has filed resolutions at oil companies for years, including six times at BP, where more than a fifth of shareholders backed its 2021 resolution asking for ambitious climate targets.
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In a five-page letter to BP that was seen by the FT, Follow This said the board must consider the 2026 resolution “on its own merits”. It called on BP to issue a supplementary notice that would include its resolution, warned that failure to do so could result in the investor group seeking “urgent injunctive relief requiring the company to comply”. It also warned of further legal action and said that calling an extraordinary general meeting at the company was another possibility.
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