Shareholder Activists Drag Companies Into U.S. Culture Wars

A backlash against companies taking on issues ranging from climate change to abortion rights is helping to push shareholder proposals to record numbers this year.

More advocacy groups are using these resolutions to try to inject their voices into the corporate agenda, questioning companies’ adoption of policies that some view as being overly political. One group, for example, put forward a resolution requesting that Eli Lilly report on the risks of supporting abortion. Last year, the drugmaker expressed its opposition to Indiana’s near-comprehensive abortion ban.

Such proposals questioning companies’ stances on social and environmental issues have come in record numbers, surging to 74 for annual meetings held before May 31, up from 43 last year, according to data from ISS Corporate Solutions, a unit of proxy-advisory firm ISS.

“The incredible dissension in the political arena is spilling over into the capital markets,” said Heidi Welsh, executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit that says it provides nonpartisan analysis of sustainability issues. “Companies are getting dragged into partisan fights that they don’t want to be in, but they can’t avoid it anymore.”