Unlike activism, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France) prefers to engage in a constructive dialogue and apply proactive voting and engagement policies.
Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France) promotes dialogue at all levels of the company (Executive management, Strategic and Financial Directors, Sustainable Development Directors, HR, Investor Relations), and where necessary, requests ad hoc meetings with operational team members in order to pursue some of the issues in more depth.
Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France) may help with the launch of communications incentives such as the signature of the United Nations Global Compact. Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France) is also experienced in practicing corporate dialogue in the context of shareholder meeting votes. Our 2018 Voting Policy covers voting principles in the area of corporate governance, but also on Social, Environmental or Stakeholder issues ; these are all consistent with our SRI analysis.
Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France) therefore acts prior and post to the Shareholders meetings (6 streamlined engagement initiatives in this context in 2016) by:
- proactively sending out the firm's Voting Policy to approximately 40 companies invested by Edmond de Rothschild Tricolore Rendement and EdR Euro Sustainable growth funds in 2016, explaining Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (France)'s approach as a responsible shareholder and inviting companies to engage with our fund managers on ESG issues. Our objective here is to send out the Voting Policy on a systematic basis to all companies held in the portfolio and potentially expressing our disagreement on a number of resolutions prior to the shareholder meetings, if necessary.
- Responding to companies' requests to inform them of the portfolio managers' voting intentions prior to the shareholder meeting, particularly in the event of negative votes or abstentions.
- Contacting and/or conducting regular meetings with company management, prior or post shareholders meetings, in order to exchange views on strategic, financial and extra-financial issues: these meetings are an ideal venue for the portfolio managers to bring up shareholder meeting resolutions and support the company as it improves its practices.
Outside the shareholder meetings, the RI team regularly organises meetings or attends ESG roadshows for their streamlined and comprehensive engagement activities. In the context of the comprehensive engagement, Edmond de Rothschild Tricolore Rendement managers send an email to outline the engagement and the objectives to the engaged company prior to a meeting.
One instance of our engagement was the cofilling of a resolution at the genral shareholder meeting of Accor requesting the application of the principle " one share one vote".