Anyone who owns shares also has a say – for example at the annual general meeting of companies. Many who work for environmental protection and human rights use this right. With increasing success.
Felicitas Wilke
If Regine Richter sets out to save the world during these months, she doesn't have to leave her adopted home Berlin. Two days before the Annual general meeting of the group, whom she wants to convince this time to do more for climate protection or fair working conditions, she submits her questions to the company. On the day of the meeting, she sits down in front of her laptop and follows it Livestream and hopes that your input will be read out verbatim as possible and adequately answered.
The right to ask critical questions
Just like with the insurance company Talanx in May. There Richter asked how far the company's plans had actually progressed to get out of the coal business. After all, a company in which Talanx has a stake still insures coal projects. The board of directors, she says, had unfortunately only answered evasively. "At a general meeting on site, I could follow up at such moments virtual event you have to take what you get. "
Regine Richter, a woman with ash-blonde hair and a warm smile who seems cool and approachable, is a full-time climate activist. The Urgewald Association, for whom the 50-year-old works, advocates, among other things, that banks no longer support arms deals with their money and that corporations no longer invest in coal projects. But Richter doesn't make posters or shout slogans through the megaphone. Your place is behind the real or virtual lectern on the General meetings of companies.
They meet there once a year Board members and shareholders of listed companies. Everyone who holds shares in the group – be it with a few shares or as large, institutional investors such as fund companies, pension funds or life insurers – come together. And according to the German Stock Corporation Act, critical questions to put to the board.
Potential for more sustainability
When a pandemic isn't turning the world upside down, corporations often invite people to large concert halls. They have had the meetings since March relocated to the internet. But the task of activists like Richter remains the same: At the meetings, they represent between a few dozen to several hundred people who have given their rights as shareholders directly to Urgewald or to the umbrella organization of critical shareholders. This association, of which Urgewald is a member, in turn distributes the Voting rights as admission tickets for the general meetings. The shareholders can give their representatives instructions on how to vote. "It's not about hitting the corporations," says Richter. "I want to show which one Potential for more sustainability They have."
Shareholders who speak out have been around for a long time. Activist hedge funds for example, who purposefully buy shares in companies in order to influence how the company positions itself strategically in the future. Like them, institutional investors have above all else classic shareholder interests in view, about the Company profitsin which they participate through the dividend. "But there have also been shareholders for a long time who speak out for ethical and moral reasons," says Zacharias Sautner, Professor of Finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.
The umbrella association of critical shareholders represents these people with its 29 member organizations. Some have become like the primeval forest environmental Protection prescribed to pursue others pacifist interests or have the Rights of those persecuted by the Nazi regime in view. Most of their concerns have so far fizzled out unheard, says Sautner. Aligning one's own business to ethical standards was not on the agenda for many corporations for a long time.
Sustainability issues are less ignored
But in the last few years the influence of people like Regine Richter seems to be growing. They are invited to meetings with the board of directors or have the Energy company RWE did not participate in a planned nuclear power plant in Bulgaria. This decision was made in 2009 after years of campaigning. "It was a turning point when Union Investment started using some of our arguments in their speeches during this period," recalls Richter. Since then, the list of successes that Urgewald attributes to his work has grown longer every year. In 2016, for example, the Commerzbankto finance fewer coal projects. The followed in 2017 Deutsche Bank, the French insurance group AXA, Allianz, Munich Re, Generali and the Norwegian State Fund moved to.
For 20 years Regine Richter is already working for Urgewald. It is not the case that all companies previously ignored all sustainability issues, she says. "But we always had to look very specifically for the people in the corporations who had an ear for our issues." Today there are more who listen and act. At the same time, some corporations are also more sensitive than before: "Sometimes I have the feeling that they feel they have been treated unfairly because we still have something to criticize."
The corona crisis has changed the work of critical shareholders. The right to ask questions, still exist, but in order to avoid having to answer many more questions online than at an on-site annual general meeting, this Company law temporarily changed: Now board members or employees from the communications department read the previously submitted questions – some of them changed – or answer questions on similar topics collectively.
Protect nature and get involved politically
"This is understandable for organizational reasons, but it also gives companies the opportunity to picking out the raisins", says Richter. A company whose general meeting has been visited by a colleague has critical questions as"not appropriate"Dismissed and ignored." I think that's pretty problematic. "The umbrella association of critical shareholders is therefore calling for 2021 Hybrid model of virtual AGM and classroom event, where shareholders can actually speak again.
Despite the current situation, Regine Richter says that she succeeds more often today than before, even before the shareholders' meeting with the Corporate sustainability departments to get into conversation. "And of course: if you have the feeling that you are being heard more, the work is more satisfying." She studied biology, driven by the desire to protect nature. "At some point I realized that I didn't want to stand in a meadow for this, but that I wanted to get involved politically." In 2001 she joined Urgewald. She has been attending general meetings for 15 years Eon, RWE or Siemens and speaks there – although she admits that she feels at most a love-hate relationship for these events.
"Just those virtual general meetings are a pretty monotonous affair and don't make it easy to follow concentrated for hours. "The on-site meetings are also strange events. The air in the hall is stuffy, mostly older men in suits sit on the stage and in the audience cliché come true – and at the same time the mirror of a society in which only a little more than every tenth woman owns a share and only around ten percent of all executive and supervisory board positions of the 185 largest listed companies are occupied by women.
Big investors have a feel for megatrends
But even that seems to be changing. Demand more and more initiatives more variety and also appear with their appeals at general meetings. "I believe that big investors have a good sense for megatrends," says Richter. It is in their own interest to advance certain issues. Sustainability or diversity may once have been a "fuss" for them, but now they are increasingly becoming issues that can make the difference between success and failure and the return that everyone longs for.
The corona crisis has so far not changed much, says Richter. "Climate protection and sustainability are still very much present in the questions at the Annual General Meetings." But while some companies would have announced that Linking a restart after the Corona crisis with ambitious climate goals wanting, the topic slipped backwards with others. "I hope," says Richter, sounding concerned, "that our successes to date have not been just a short trend."
How can I become a critical shareholder myself?
Anyone who owns shares in a company can at any time speak yourself at the general meeting. For face-to-face events, the speech must be registered at the speaker's desk at the beginning of the meeting or submitted to the Group. Alternatively, you can use his Voting rights to the umbrella association of critical shareholders transfer. The organization's website explains how to do this: Kritischeaktionaere.de. Primeval forest (urgewald.org) is one of the NGOs to which it then passes the voting rights on.
Regine Richter, 50, has been a full-time activist for the environmental and human rights organization Urgewald for 20 years.
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