Stewardship
24
Voting
We believe in the power of responsible voting to drive positive change. Our strategic approach to stewardship not only safeguards shareholder value but also promotes sustainable business practices, setting new standards for corporate governance in the investment landscape.
The Stewardship team’s engagement and voting activities are based on Nordea’s Engagement Policy and Corporate Gover- nance Principles. These principles summarize our expectations on companies’ governance issues, such as board composition, remuneration, capital management and sustainability. We believe that sound corporate governance contributes to shareholder value and reduces risks in equity investments. It is also essential for a balanced and transparent relation- ship between companies and shareholders, in which the lat- ter play a vital role in improving a company’s performance. From a shareholder perspective, voting is an effective tool for influencing companies and supporting and escalating our engagements.
The Stewardship team analyses the shareholder meetings agenda items and resolutions of investee companies and arranges ongoing dialogue with investee companies before and after these meetings. Actual voting decisions are also influ- enced by our engagements with companies and the views of internal investment experts, such as the RI team and Portfolio Managers. Proxy voting is supported by two external vendors to facilitate the voting and provide analytic input. We use ISS and Glass Lewis for proxy voting; execution as well as research. Besides sound governance, we place particular emphasis on our other focus areas – climate, human rights and biodiver- sity. We are seeing increasing shareholder proposals relating to environmental issues and climate reporting. Our Corporate Governance Principles and RI policy are reviewed annually. This review aims to evaluate whether our policies still meet best industry practice and our unitholders’ expectations and accurately reflect our internal processes. The review also includes monitoring any updates to signed stewardship codes or RI-related memberships that may imply certain commitments.
NAM aims to:
• Actively engage with companies and stakeholders pre- dictably and consistently, thus contributing to returns with responsibility for our unitholders • Act as industry leader and contribute to well-functioning capital markets • Be transparent with engagements and voting records
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