Participation in general shareholder meetings of banks and insurers is an important area of our foundation's work. These meetings are an opportunity to ask the companies' boards of directors questions about their climate strategy, as well as to make other shareholders aware of where their money is going. This is an important part of climate shareholder activism, which we have written about on our website.
— Attending a shareholder meeting of an institution that financially supports the fossil fuel sector is also an opportunity to get important information or declarations from management. Under such circumstances, one can see which companies are taking the climate issue more and more seriously, and for which raising the topic is still a necessary evil. — comments Jan Chudzynski, financial specialist at the RT-ON Foundation.
This year we attended the general meetings of 5 companies: mBank, Santander Bank Poland, PKO BP, Pekao S.A. and PZU. Minority shareholders attended the meetings on behalf of our foundation to ask the companies' boards uncomfortable questions about their climate policies.
The events were accompanied by protests and happenings co-organized with art activist Arek Pasożyt and Extinction Rebellion.
Below are articles summarizing our participation in the AGMs of each company:
mBank:
https://rt-on.pl/en/green-finance/what-we-do-2/item/647-agm-2022-mbank
PKO BP:
https://rt-on.pl/en/green-finance/what-we-do-2/item/637-pko-bp-agm-2022
PZU:
https://rt-on.pl/en/green-finance/what-we-do-2/item/649-agm-2022-pzu
Pekao S.A.:
https://rt-on.pl/en/green-finance/what-we-do-2/item/651-agm-pekao-2022
Santander Bank Poland:
https://rt-on.pl/en/green-finance/what-we-do-2/item/650-agm-2022-santander
We realize how much financial institutions are contributing to climate crisis. That's why we participate in general shareholder meetings - meetings where key decisions on companies' strategies are made. In this way, we can put pressure on companies' boards of directors, but also show them the right course of action for the climate.
You can learn about the huge impact of the financial sector on climate from the "Banking on Climate Chaos" report, among others. Our foundation in May this year also published a report on the involvement of Polish banks in fossil fuels, taking into account the largest banks in Poland in terms of assets.