Investment stewardship

Supporting long-term financial value for our clients




As fiduciaries, we help our clients advance their long-term economic interests. Engaging with companies on material business risks and opportunities that may impact their ability to deliver shareholder returns is one of the ways we do that.

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What is investment stewardship?

A link between our clients and the companies they are invested in. Stewardship includes engaging with boards and management teams, as well as voting as a shareholder on our clients’ behalf – when authorised to do so.

Our approach to investment stewardship

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Engaging
We engage in ongoing, constructive dialogues with companies on issues that may impact long-term financial value creation.
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Proxy Voting
We vote to signal support for, or concern, about a company’s corporate governance and business model.
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Responsible leadership
We share our perspective on topical and emerging stewardship issues that may impact clients’ financial interests as long-term investors.
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Transparency
We provide insight and transparency into the actions we are taking on behalf of clients on a quarterly basis.

Encouraging sound corporate goverance and resilient business models

Engagement is core to our stewardship efforts. Our engagement priorities reflect the five themes on which we most frequently engage companies, where they are relevant and a source of material business risk or opportunity.

  • Our investment stewardship efforts have always started with the board and executive leadership. The performance of the board is critical to the long-term financial success of a company and the protection of shareholders’ economic interests.

  • We engage on long-term corporate strategy, purpose, and financial resilience to understand how boards and management are aligning their business decision-making with the company’s purpose and adjusting strategy and/or capital allocation plans as necessary as business dynamics change.

  • Executive compensation is an important tool to drive long-term financial value creation by incentivising and rewarding the successful delivery of strategic goals and financial outperformance against peers. In our view, it is important for companies to make clear in their disclosures the connection between compensation policies and outcomes and the financial interests of long-term shareholders.

  • BlackRock Investment Stewardship engages with companies to better understand their approach to, and oversight of, material climate-related risks and opportunities as well as how they manage material natural capital impacts and dependencies, in the context of their business model and sector.

  • In our experience, companies that invest in the relationships that are critical to their ability to meet their strategic objectives are more likely to deliver durable, long-term financial performance. By contrast, poor relationships may create adverse impacts that could expose companies to legal, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks.