The issues of climate change and net zero served as the business du jour at the JP Morgan annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday. No less than 3 proposals were offered to try and move the company toward taking more aggressive action on climate change, and all three crashed and burned.
The first dealt with having “the Board of Directors adopt a policy for a time-bound phase-out of JPM’s lending and underwriting to projects and companies engaging in new fossil fuel exploration and development.” It received 8% of the shareholder vote.
The second tried to direct “JP Morgan Chase to issue a report disclosing a transition plan that describes how it intends to align its financing activities with its 2030 sectoral greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.” This one got 35% approval.
And the third sought to strongarm the company into producing a report that “discloses 2030 absolute greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions reduction targets covering both lending and underwriting for two high emitting sectors: Oil and Gas and Power Generation.” This one received 12 percent shareholder support.
To its credit, JP Morgan’s board opposed all the measures, giving lengthy explanations as to why they did so in the annual shareholder report. In virtually every case, however, the explanations were not so much that they opposed the activist proposals in principle, but that they were already undertaking similar actions that aligned with these goals anyway. CFACT, which voted against all these measures, was still less than impressed.
After the voting was completed on the proposals, the board took general questions. It was at this point that CFACT’s President Craig Rucker participated in the meeting by directly asking JP Morgan CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a pointed question. Rucker inquired, “JPMorgan Chase’s annual ESG report says that it has a $2.5 trillion sustainable development target. What exactly is this targeting, and wouldn’t all that money be better spent improving good returns for shareholders rather than squandered on showcasing woke priorities?”
Dimon responded saying, “Oh, well you’re completely wrong. Almost all of that is positive business, meaning that it’s financing solar, it’s financing wind, it’s financing grids, it’s financing R&D, it’s financing battery plants, it’s financing car companies, it’s financing a huge amount of companies who are doing a great job of reducing the CO2 and clean carbon capture. It’s financing the agricultural companies. It’s all of that, It’s all almost for profit.”
CFACT plans to continue its monitoring and participation in corporate shareholder meetings to offset efforts by Green activists to push corporate America ever more to the Left.
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