Asset Stewardship
To fulfill our asset stewardship responsibility, we rely on two main tools: voting at shareholder meetings and engaging with companies.
Our Approach
The aim of our Asset Stewardship program is to promote robust governance, including board oversight, and disclosures. The board of directors is accountable for overseeing a company’s material risks and opportunities and providing adequate disclosure of such. Therefore, the board is the main focus of our engagement and voting activities. We focus on electing capable directors and holding them accountable for disclosure and effective oversight of a company’s long-term strategy.
Our Proxy Voting and Engagement Principles
We have organized our proxy voting and engagement program around three broad principles:
Effective Board Oversight: We believe that well-governed companies can protect and pursue shareholder interests better and withstand the challenges of an uncertain economic environment.
Disclosure: It is important for shareholders to receive timely and accurate reporting of a company’s financial performance and strategy so that they are able to assess both the value and risk of their investment.
Shareholder Protection: We believe it is in the best interest of shareholders for companies to have appropriate shareholder rights and accountability mechanisms in place.
Our Global Proxy Voting Engagement Policy
View all of our voting guidelines and expectations.
Annual Asset Stewardship Report
Our 2023 report describes our approach to asset stewardship, highlights our stewardship activities and provides data and references to help our stakeholders understand the ways we use engagement and proxy voting in pursuit of long-term value creation for our clients.
Sustainability Stewardship Service
An Innovative Stewardship Offering for Clients Who Prioritize Sustainability Outcomes.
Proxy Voting Choice
State Street Global Advisors has expanded its proxy voting choice program. Now, even more investors have the power to direct the proxy voting of shares held in the eligible equity index funds and segregated accounts they own.
Leadership
Benjamin and his colleagues are responsible for developing and implementing our global proxy voting policies and guidelines across all investment strategies and managing our proxy voting activities and issuer engagements on ESG issues. Prior to Ben’s current role, he was the Asset Stewardship’s team Head of Asia Pacific based in Tokyo, Japan.
More on Asset Stewardship
For questions or any further information on our stewardship program, please email the Governance Team at State Street Global Advisors.