The number of companies engaged figure reported above reflects only meetings with ESG analysts involvement and may exclude investor-only meetings where relevant topics were discussed.
As a firm with a long history of conducting independent fundamental research, direct engagement with company management teams on a range of issues, including ESG, has always been a core part of our investment process. The majority of our company research is the result of direct contact with company management, both in our offices and on site, as well as contacts with company suppliers, customers, and competitors. Each year, Wellington Management participates in more than 10,000 meetings with company management teams from around the world. Portfolio managers, industry analysts, and ESG analysts all take part in our ongoing dialogue with companies. Maintaining this ongoing dialogue is central to how we discharge our stewardship responsibilities on behalf of our clients. The goal of our stewardship activities - engaging with company managements and voting proxies on our clients' behalf - is to support decisions that we believe will maximise the long-term value of securities we hold in client portfolios.
As the vast majority of our meetings discuss long-term strategic business issues, we recently introduced a complementary engagement-tracking tool for all investors. This tool will provide an interface to allow users to add topics, feedback, and outcomes of recently attended company meetings. Investors can enter engagement information associated with each meeting they attend. In particular, they are tracking the feedback they provided to the company and the outcome of the engagement, in terms of how it influenced an investment decision and/or how the company is taking action based on the feedback. These examples will serve to enhance our current reporting for clients on the impact of ESG and engagement at the strategy level and will better reflect the holistic engagement efforts of our firm. We look forward to making this expanded report available to clients in 2H 2020. This will also be instrumental in helping Wellington meet the firm-level reporting requirements of the European Shareholder Rights Directive II and the revised UK Stewardship Code.