Advise for sustainable investors

This year the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development (Vereniging van Beleggers voor Duurzame Ontwikkeling – VBDO) has issued a voting advice which can be used when voting in shareholders’ meetings of Dutch stock exchange-listed companies. The voting advice is based on research of SOMO.

Every year the VBDO visits the General Assembly of Shareholders of the ten largest Dutch stock exchanged listed companies from the AEX index and the Midkap. During the shareholders’ meetings VBDO asks critical questions about the companies’ sustainable policy (which they have followed), and votes according to to the VBDO Sustainable Voting Policy.

This voting advice focuses on various agenda points of the shareholders’ meetings, and since 2007 also on the agenda point ‘discharge of directors’. For this agenda point, the company asks its shareholders for approval of the policy implemented by the Board of Directors and the supervision implemented by the Supervisory Board. After approval, directors can no longer be held liable for the policy implemented, and are then discharged.

When there are serious abuses in economic, environmental and/or social areas the VBDO advises in many cases that no discharge be granted to the directors of companies which implement policies that can be directly associated with these abuses. In other words, directors of companies who are not implementing corporate social responsibility can be held liable for this.

In preparation for the 2010 shareholders meetings, SOMO and VBDO are jointly carrying out research into the CSR policy and practice of ten Dutch stock-exchange listed companies in 2009. SOMO has drawn up a profile for each of these companies.

The profiles will be published before the shareholders’ meetings, and can be downloaded here:

Company	Shareholdersmeeting
Ahold	13 April 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
KPN	13 April 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
SBM Offshore	14 April 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
Heineken	22 April 2010	Overview company	Voting advice (opens in new window)
ING	27 April 2010	Coming soon
Aegon	29 April 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
Fugro	06 May 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
Unilever	11 May 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)
Shell	18 May 2010	Overview company	Voting advice(opens in new window)