Amundi - Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2016

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A FORMALISED ENGAGEMENT POLICY
Amundi’s engagement policy has three aspects: engagement for
influence, data collection for rating purposes, as well as voting at
general shareholders’ meetings and the pre-meeting dialogue. It is
an essential component of Amundi’s fiduciary responsibility and its
role as a responsible investor.
Engagement for influence
Amundi has a policy committing it to influence specific issues, helping
companies move towards better practices. Since 2013, the ESG
analysis team has been particularly active regarding six topics. The
ESG analysis and Corporate Governance teams publish this work in
an engagement report, available at
In our fourth engagement report, we took stock of the dialogue
initiated with companies regarding the topics introduced in 2013
and 2014:
p respect for Human Rights in the mining and petroleum industries;
p combatting food waste in the agrifoods and retail sectors;
p conflict minerals.
We are introducing two new topics:
p the environmental impact associated with coal in the Utilities sector;
p child labour in the cocoa and tobacco industries.
In addition to these, we support international collective shareholder
initiatives (see Section 3.1.3.3.).
Data collection for rating purposes
To refine the ratings given by the ESG analysis, the extra-financial
analysts meet with companies throughout the year. These are selected
based on the fraction of equity owned by Amundi and the relative
size of the holding in the portfolios or in the benchmark indexes. In
2016, Amundi’s extra-financial analysts met with 205 companies.
Voting at general shareholders’ meetings
and the pre-meeting dialogue
Starting in 1996 we have adopted our own voting policy, updated
yearly, that incorporates environmental and social criteria. We
exercise our voting rights in the general shareholders’ meetings of
the companies our portfolios have invested in.
Our voting policy (1) meets a three-fold objective: protect the interest
of shareholders, formalise and make public our desires in terms
of governance so as to facilitate dialogue with the companies and
contribute to the effectiveness of corporate governance as a whole
and thus to the efficiency of the markets.
The shareholder dialogue consists of regular, constructive discussions
with companies where we have the heaviest investment, highlighting
our desires as a responsible investor in regard to the topics presented
at the general shareholders’ meetings. It is structured around a
formalised system (e.g.: pre-alerts before the general shareholders’
meetings) and enables greater transparency, additional commitments,
and changes to, or even the discontinuation of, some of the
Company’s practices. In 2016, this engagement involved 240 issuers
through alerts and dialogues initiated by the companies.
Voting campaign 2014 2015 2016
GSMs dealt with 2,576 2,565 2,623
Resolutions dealt with 31,237 32,396 32,771
Significant events in 2016 in terms of engagement
The compensation issue was once again the hot topic of the 2016
voting season. Some countries experienced their first rejection of
say on pay: Renault in France, BP in the United Kingdom and even
Deutsche Bank in Germany. Nevertheless, beyond these high-profile
cases, in which Amundi contributed to the debate, the transparency
of compensation data, the practices and the quality of the dialogue
with the companies showed improvement, particularly in France.
This is reflected in a slight drop in our opposition arguments on this
subject.
However, the core of governance remains the proper functioning of
the Boards, for which truly useful information remains limited, and
objective indicators such as independence are still often insufficient.
Companies are attempting to better highlight the role of their Boards
in their documentation and useful information is increasingly filtering
through via the results of Board evaluations. The main change in
Amundi’s 2016 voting policy was the reassertion of the advantage
of a direct dialogue between investors and the Board. This approach
facilitates both better comprehension of the role and functioning of
the Board and helps ensure that investors’ opinions effectively reach
the Board. France remained slightly out of step with the growth of
this trend in numerous countries. However, 2016 marked a turn and
we were able to enter into direct communication with a much greater
number of directors this year.
Finally, the 2016 season was also marked by the commitment of
shareholders to climate issues. In line with the 2015 resolutions at BP
and Shell, supported by Amundi, we co-filed resolutions requesting
additional information on the climate risk management strategies
of Anglo American, Glencore and Rio Tinto, which were authorised
by these companies’ Boards and approved by a wide margin in
their general meetings. We also participated in initiatives on the
same subject with ENI and Total, which resulted in the publication
of additional information by these companies. Finally, we publicly
announced our support for similar resolutions at Exxon, Chevron and
AES, which however were not approved by their general meetings.
(1) A report on voting rights exercised and shareholder discussions, updated half-yearly, is available on the Amundi website .
14 AMUNDI - 2016 Corporate social responsability report
Economic, social and environmental information
Act as a responsible financial institution