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Walking the walk: UK votes for Paris at Big Oil

Asset managers

How UK's top 10 asset managers voted on oil giant climate resolutions

Publication date

April 1, 2023

Written by

Jesper Vaarwerk & Harlee Richards

Key takeaways

  • UK investors support climate action in the US more than at home. The top 10 UK asset managers voted overwhelmingly in favor of Follow This climate resolutions at US oil majors (Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc.) but showed much weaker, inconsistent support for identical resolutions at UK-headquartered Shell and BP 
  • Shell and BP use “Say on Climate” votes to claim false legitimacy. Both companies leveraged high shareholder support for their own management-sponsored climate strategy votes to publicly claim broad approval for their transition plans, even though many of the same investors who voted for these Say on Climate resolutions also disclosed rationales stating the companies’ targets were not actually Paris-aligned. 
  • No UK asset manager believes any oil major is Paris-aligned, yet many still oppose the resolutions. Despite this shared view, some investors voted against Follow This’s resolutions anyway, citing preference for continued private engagement over public votes 
DOWNLOAD REPORT

This April 2023 report by Follow This analyzes the votes and voting rationales of the ten largest UK asset managers on climate resolutions filed at “Big Oil” companies, with a particular focus on Shell and BP.

It examines voting patterns from 2017-2022, compares UK investor behavior to their Dutch counterparts, and investigates how Shell and BP have used their own management-sponsored “Say on Climate” resolutions to claim shareholder approval for climate strategies that investors’ own rationales suggest are not actually Paris-aligned. 

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