Anti-fossil fuel protesters interrupted New York City Comptroller Brad Lander while he gave remarks at the Council of Institutional Investors’ 2024 Fall Conference on Sept. 9.
The handful of protesters, including at least two brandishing “Planet Over Profit” signs, were removed quickly from the Grand Ballroom at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge after taking the stage where was Lander was speaking.
“Yeah, welcome to Brooklyn,” Lander said. “We have a lot of characters here, and many of them believe in good corporate governance apparently.”
Despite what had happened on stage, he said the work that his office is doing is “some of the boldest and most thoughtful and ambitious of fiduciaries working on decarbonization and the climate transition,” the comptroller told the audience.
“And this year we have three big wins where we were able to negotiate resolutions and didn’t even have to go to a vote at Citibank, at Royal Bank of Canada and at J.P. Morgan Chase, all of whom agreed for the very first time to start disclosing the ratio of their fossil fuel lending to their clean lending, a critical form of climate disclosure that was not available that the team did the research on, brought those resolutions forward and has a big step forward on climate transparency.”
In addition, his office has also reached “some of the first agreements on artificial intelligence and making sure that our companies will have real thoughtful corporate governance policies related to the use of AI,” Lander said. “And we are excited about those as well,” the comptroller said.
During this remarks, Lander also alluded to a virtual fireside chat with Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods, which is on the conference agenda for Sept.10.
“I’m not going to disrupt tomorrow for sure because we’re good listeners, but we were taken aback by Exxon’s actions,” Lander said.
In May, a coalition of state treasurers, government fiscal officers and pension plan fiduciaries sent letters to the largest global asset managers including BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Chase and others, according to a news release from California State Treasurer Fiona Ma’s office.
The May 21 letter, signed by pension fund executives Ma, Lander and others, said that Exxon Mobil in January “side-stepped the established SEC no-action process and sued two of its own investors, Arjuna Capital and Follow This, after they filed a climate shareholder proposal.”
The letter, issued shortly before the company’s annual meeting, said that while the signers took no position on the proposal’s merits, they were “deeply concerned” that Exxon Mobil’s actions were designed to curtail a key shareholder right.
Significantly, Exxon Mobil was proceeding with the lawsuit even though the proponents had withdrawn the proposal and had committed not to resubmit it, the letter said.
“We believe that ExxonMobil’s attempts to undermine shareholder rights reflect a
fundamental failure of board oversight and a waste of corporate assets on litigation,” the letter said. “That’s why at the company’s upcoming annual meeting on May 29th, shareholders must vote to hold board leadership – particularly Executive Chair and CEO Darren Woods and Lead Independent Director and Nominating and Governance Committee Chair Joseph Hooley – accountable by voting against them.”
In January, Exxon sued Arjuna Capital and Follow This in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas. On May 22, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman allowed the lawsuit to continue against Arjuna Capital. In a June 17 order, the judge said Exxon’s claim against Arjuna Capital was moot and dismissed it without prejudice.
