As large shareholder in Swedish companies, focus for engagement done by internal staff is on these companies primarily. With approx 25 Swedish companies in the Swedish equity portfolio we attend all AGM. We have one to one meetings arranged by us with the chairman or meetings arranged by the companies themselves with a group of investors on regular basis. Corporate governance issues are always high on the agenda and, when appropriate, any ESG issue of concern to us. Íssues are identified through a systematic monitoring of external sources, ratings etc.
We also use a theme based approach whereby we identify a specific issue of concern to us, then doing a thorough analysis of how well different companies are at addressing the issue. Based on that analysis, we identify laggards and engage with them to promote change in the area of interest.
For proxy voting outside Sweden, we vote on almost all companies in our developed market portfolio (approx 300 companies in the US, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.)
For approximately 50 companies a letter is sent describing the rational for voting against the proposal by management. When we select the companies that we send letters to, we prioritize two issues, remuneration and split CEO/Chair.
A large porpotion of AP1´s engagment activites are done under the Ethical Council umbrella, where AP1 is a founding member. How engagements are identified and prioritised is to be found on www.ethicalcouncil.com and in the annual report of the Ethical Council.