Blog — 28 Jan, 2022
Taking a Deeper Look at Investor Activism Campaigns
Investor activism, a process where an individual or group buys a significant stake in a public company to influence how the company is run, is predicted to increase in 2022. This marks a continuation of a trend we have seen gather pace over the last few years. Further fueling this growth is the Securities and Exchange Commission's late 2021 guidance that makes it harder for US companies to block climate change and human rights petitions from annual shareholder votes.
Leveraging S&P Capital IQ data, we've created an infographic that analyzes recent Investor Activism trends with an ESG lens.
Investor activist campaigns dipped slightly in 2021 following consecutive year-over-year increases between 2017 and 2020. Of the 568 campaigns launched in 2021, 69% of them had an ESG component, which was the highest tally in the last five years.
Corporate Governance was be the most common theme within ESG-related activist campaigns from 2017 to 2021, but Environmental and Social-related campaigns have increased recently.
Click here to view our complete infographic that includes further commentary and breakdowns of ESG activism campaigns by industry and company market cap, as well as the average ESG scores for major sectors.