Only 1.4% of shareholders at asset managers gave majority support to ESG issues, down from 21% in 2021.

In addition, the four largest asset managers in the world (BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard) blocked corporate action by voting against shareholder resolutions to protect human rights, nature and climate.

Collectively, these four supported a mere 7% of crucial shareholder resolutions.

This is according to ShareAction, a charity campaigning for responsible investment, and its Voting Matters 2024 research.

It also revealed that an additional 48 shareholder resolutions would have passed if these big four would have chosen to support them.

Furthermore,  only two out of 73 shareholder resolutions on climate change and ESG received enough shareholder support to pass.

Claudia Gray, head of financial sector research at ShareAction, said: “This is the worst result we’ve seen from asset managers in the six years we’ve been monitoring their voting performance and shows a worrying retreat from ambition when it’s most needed.

“As support for shareholder resolutions hits rock bottom, our first ever analysis of votes against resolutions proposed by company management paints a similarly bleak and disappointing picture, with asset managers failing to use these votes to hold companies accountable for their social and climate impacts.

“This should be of great concern to asset owners who are putting their faith in asset managers to act in their best interests. If ever we needed asset owners to be the drivers of responsible investment, it’s right now. We need their leadership to hold asset managers to account at such a critical time for people and planet.”

 A BlackRock spokesperson commented in response: “BlackRock’s voting decisions, are based on the long-term financial interests of our clients. For the 2024 proxy year, we found that most environmental and social shareholder proposals were overreaching, lacked economic merit, or  were unlikely to promote long-term shareholder value.

We have led the industry in providing clients with proxy voting choice and innovation through the introduction of our Voting Choice and Climate & Decarbonization Stewardship programs. The most important perspective is that of our clients – a majority of which continue to delegate voting authority to the BlackRock Investment Stewardship team notwithstanding the number of options that allow them to vote proxies themselves or to align their mandates with specific goals.’’