Shell boss hit by shareholder revolt over £8 million pay
The boss of Royal Dutch Shell has suffered a bruising shareholder revolt after more than a quarter of its investors voted against his multi-million euro payout for 2017. Shareholders took against the FTSE 100 boss after an accident in Pakistan in 2017 claimed the lives of more than 200 people in an explosion of a fuel tanker operated by one of the energy giant’s subsidiaries. “Neither the annual report nor the sustainability report detail any of the factors which led to the accident, and the renumeration report is silent on it altogether,” a report from Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said. The AGM was also dominated by criticism of Shell’s green credentials by activist shareholders who are calling on the oil major to broaden its carbon-cutting plans to include the emissions of its customers when using Shell fuels. However, only 5.1 percent of shareholders backed the resolution for tougher targets. (Telegraph)
Legal & General launches fund to boost gender diversity
Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) has set up a fund to benefit organisations with higher levels of gender diversity, which it hopes will inspire businesses to improve female representation. The L&G Future World Gender in Leadership UK Index Fund – which it has called the GIRL fund – will focus exclusively on UK-listed companies. It will be open to institutional and retail investors, with LGIM putting £50 million of its own money into the fund. GIRL aims to score companies based on four gender diversity measures: women on the board of directors, women executives, women in management and women in the workplace. LGIM said it was also considering using the gender pay gap as a fifth indicator. The organisations hoping to secure investment from the fund are expected to reach a minimum of 30% representation across the four measures. (Personnel Today)
Find out more: Check out Cathy Moscardini’s blog from last year on gender lens investment.
Data Privacy
Most GDPR emails unnecessary and some illegal, say experts
The vast majority of emails flooding inboxes across Europe from companies asking for consent to keep recipients on their mailing list are unnecessary and some may be illegal, privacy experts have said, as new rules over data privacy come into force at the end of this week. “Businesses are not required to automatically ‘repaper’ or refresh all existing 1998 Act consents in preparation for the GDPR,” said Toni Vitale, the head of regulation, data and information at the law firm Winckworth Sherwood. If the business had consent to communicate with you before GDPR, that consent probably carries over, and even if it doesn’t there are five other reasons (contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public interest and legitimate interests) a company can cite for continuing to process data. Vitale also suggests that if the business really does lack the necessary consent to communicate with you, it probably lacks the consent even to email to ask you to give that consent. (Guardian)
Climate Change
“Climate change is real,” carmakers tell White House in letter
Automakers have urged the White House to cooperate with California officials in a coming rewrite of vehicle efficiency standards, saying “climate change is real.” The plea came in a letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry’s leading trade group. It said carmakers “strongly support” continued alignment between federal mileage standards and those set by California. General Motors, Ford, Daimler and nine other carmakers are members of the Alliance. The letter came roughly a week before President Donald Trump signalled he was open to talks with California on mileage standards. The direction came after the administration’s April ruling that the Obama administration standards for model years 2022-2025 were too aggressive and needed to be eased. (Bloomberg)
Report: Global carbon market increases by 56% in one year, says World Bank
The global value of carbon pricing schemes are now estimated to be worth $82 billion, according to a new report from the World Bank. The figure for 2017 represents a 56 percent increase on the $52 billion in the previous year, following the opening of new markets, including China. The report finds that there are currently 51 carbon pricing initiatives around the world, consisting of 25 emissions trading schemes and 26 carbon taxes. These initiatives cover 20 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions, or 11 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The schemes have been put in place across 71 jurisdictions, 45 of which are on the national level as governments increasingly see the benefits of curbing emissions. The World Bank estimates that receipts from carbon pricing now amount to $33 billion, also a 50 percent increase on the previous year. Along with China’s planned regulation of its power sector, new carbon programmes were rolled-out in Chile, Colombia, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Ontario. (Climate Action Programme)
Event
2018 edie Responsible Retail Conference
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Sustainability leaders contributing to this event include: Selfridges; Wilko; IKEA; The Body Shop; Ocado; Kingfisher; British Retail Consortium; Whitbread; #2minutesbeachclean; Surfdome; Arcadia Group; CDP; Valpak and more.
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