Private Shareholder Engagements on Material ESG Issues

Rob Bauer, Jeroen Derwall, Colin Tissen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We study private shareholder engagements with 2,465 listed firms about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues from 2007 to 2020. We examine the extent to which private engagements address financially material ESG issues and contribute to firm performance. We find that material engagements succeed more often than immaterial engagements and that the targets of successful material engagements significantly outperform their peers by 2.5% over the next 14 months. Further, we find that material engagements are more often associated with improvements in profitability and cost ratios than immaterial engagements. Finally, our evidence indicates that a decrease in CO2e emission intensity accompanies environmental engagements.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)64-95
Number of pages32
JournalFinancial Analysts Journal
Volume79
Issue number4
Early online dateJul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Oct 2023

Keywords

  • corporate sustainability
  • ESG
  • materiality
  • shareholder engagement

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Private Shareholder Engagements on Material ESG Issues'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this