Pushing progress on the climate crisis
When we identified that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of one of our holdings, a multi-billion dollar payments firm, were growing faster than its sales, we pressed the company to take meaningful action to address its carbon footprint and adopt a long-term reduction target. After several failed attempts at productive dialogue with management, we took stronger action: filing a shareholder resolution to be included on the company’s proxy statement for all shareholders to vote on.
Soon after filing the resolution, the company agreed to hire an external consulting firm to conduct a materiality assessment of all sustainability issues that company faced, to set a GHG reduction target, and to provide us with regular progress reports. In return, we withdrew our resolution.
Since our initial engagement on this issue, the company has made significant progress toward holistically addressing its climate impact. In addition to hiring a Chief Sustainability Officer to manage and oversee this work, the company adopted a science-based GHG reduction target (the first for its industry) and incorporated an internal price on carbon.