Engagement with company management is a critical part of our investment teams research work and is incorporated as a part the teams fundamentally based research. Engagement takes different forms covering one-on-one meetings, group meetings together with other investors, attendance at conference presentations and on conference calls. WellsCap investment teams typically meet and engage with more than 500 companies per year.
WellsCap is structured with independent and specialized investment teams; given our structure, currently engagement activities are the responsibility of our independent investment teams and not centralized. However, a key goal in 2018 for the dedicated ESG team is to establish a robust firm-level Stewardship Platform to deliver maximum impact on the companies we interact with. This will establish a comprehensive, forward looking engagement program that contains those companies with significant and material ESG risks and where we believe our engagement, including collaborative engagement, is most likely to produce change.