In this piece:
Active Shareowner Update
First Quarter 2025
For more than two decades, Boston Common’s shareholder stewardship and direct company engagement efforts have generated meaningful improvements in corporate processes and policies worldwide. This work has also led to critical insights into how companies we invest in are assessing and mitigating material risks, and investing in sustainability innovation to support long-term growth.
Responsible stewardship encourages sustainable growth, reduces risk by addressing sustainability issues proactively, and it helps enhance company resilience and efficiency—essentials to driving long-term value. Each quarter, our Active Shareowner Update captures our work in progress in the field and celebrates the results of our sustained efforts.
US Shareholder Resolutions Update
This proxy season proved challenging for engaging US companies on select topics. Still, it was not without its successes.
Human Rights in Supply Chains
Prioritizing Gender
By Amy Orr, Director of Engagement, US
Working conditions for women are often misrepresented in human rights due diligence (HRDD) standards, supplier audit practices, and human rights impact assessments (HRIAs), dampening companies’ ability to follow through on workplace health and safety promises. Failure to address this risk effectively has led to global supply chain disruptions.
Mindful of these ongoing challenges, we are implementing our Investor Guidance for Prioritizing Gender (published in 2022). During the first quarter, we focused on industries such as apparel, where women make up a disproportionately high percentage of the workforce and supply chain.
In January, I spoke on a panel organized by ICCR titled “Gender and Investing—Making the Business Case.” The panel focused on apparel supply chains, where women account for 60-80% of the labor market but remain underrepresented in managerial roles. This workplace imbalance has led to heightened evidence of gender-based violence and harassment, lack of trust, and ineffective audits, all of which must be addressed to strengthen global supply chain reliability.
Alongside the various shareholder perspectives represented on the panel, I shared Boston Common’s investor lens, underscoring the business case for centering gender across corporate value chains. I voiced the need to improve supply chain traceability and make independent assessments that include female worker perspectives the norm. These steps would enable companies and investors to better understand the problem scope and identify practical solutions.
After the panel discussion, we implemented our 2022 Gender Guidance in a few ways:
Industry partnerships are not only more efficient but will also help normalize the importance of independent human rights impact assessments across industries. We will urge companies participating in such collaborative approaches to be mindful of gender power imbalances and ensure that female worker voices are included.
Water Stewardship
A Building Block for Business Resilience
Pressure on freshwater resources is at an all-time high. This undermines economic stability and growth and impacts global agricultural and industrial supply chains. Engaging companies on an issue as systemic as water is complex. During the first quarter of 2025, we used various tactics focused on water stewardship through direct and collaborative dialogues with companies across sectors:
We are encouraging water utilities to improve availability, affordability, and quality. Following our initial investor outreach to the Brazilian water utility, Sabesp, the company identified a need to direct capital investments toward making infrastructure more flood and drought-resilient, improving affordability, and limiting physical water loss in the distribution system. We followed up to encourage Sabesp to ensure rural and Indigenous communities are accounted for in Brazil's universal water access plan.
We engaged the largest U.S. water utility, American Water Works (AWK), about its planned $1 billion in capital improvements underway to comply with emerging PFAS regulation. As of its March 2025 earnings report, AWK’s capital improvements were moving forward despite rollbacks in environmental regulations elsewhere. AWK underscored how PFAS regulation continues to receive bipartisan support. AWK was also a key party to multi-district-litigation with major PFAS producers, 3M, and DuPont, to ensure producer accountability for polluting water sources with these harmful “forever” chemicals.
We engaged companies that develop innovative technologies with the potential to improve water efficiency and rid water supplies of harmful chemicals. For example, Veolia and Ecolab each offer technologies that limit pollution from industrial activities —technologies likely to benefit from increased awareness and regulatory oversight of harmful chemicals in water supplies. We participated in a collaborative dialogue with Ecolab in March, which pressed the company to continue to report on its approach to managing harmful chemicals.
We are asking companies with water-intensive operations and supply chains to improve water efficiency and limit operations in water-stressed regions. We remain involved in the investor-led Ceres Valuing Water Finance Initiative—104 investors representing $17.7 trillion in AUM focused on addressing water risk in supply chains of high water intensity industries like apparel, food and beverage, and data centers.
In January, we signed outreach letters to eight companies and will join collaborative engagements with select companies in 2025, including Kerry Group, Sony, and Inditex. These dialogues will prioritize the most water-dependent sections of company supply chains and encourage limiting operations in water-stressed regions. For example, Kerry Group has a time-bound water efficiency target for its direct operations (15% improvement in efficiency by 2025). The company achieves this by focusing on water efficiency and investing in capital projects. Kerry Group has conducted a water risk assessment of its direct operations, and a high-level assessment of water challenges and risks associated with priority raw material categories.
Doubling Down on Human Capital Management
By Lauren Compere, Head of Stewardship & Engagement
We are speaking up about the importance of diversity with our US companies. At least 36 anti-DEI shareholder proposals have been filed thus far in 2025—several targeting BCAM holdings, Apple, Costco, John Deere, and Visa. The Apple and Costco resolutions were rejected by ~98% of shareholders, and the Visa resolution by 99%. We were among the overwhelming majority of shareholders voting against these proposals, with all companies also recommending a vote against. More diverse companies with strong human capital management capabilities are better positioned to attract top talent, connect with a broad customer base, and adapt to new challenges as diversity grows. Shareholders and companies understand the benefits and necessity of creating diverse, inclusive workplaces.
Other portfolio companies voicing their continued support for existing DEI-related initiatives include Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, TJX, and Ulta. At the same time, holdings, including Lowes and Alphabet, have rolled back efforts.
In our outreach, we encourage companies to ensure diversity and inclusion remain a strategic human capital priority—an essential priority for companies developing the ongoing capacity to thrive in a knowledge-based economy. Companies can demonstrate this through the core pillars for successful talent retention across the life cycle (recruitment, retention, mentorship, and sponsorship), pay equity, professional development training, leadership skills, etc. We believe they will because embracing diversity is not simply a matter of corporate compliance but also of enlightened self-interest, as it has become essential to driving shareowner value.
Emerging Markets Engagement Updates
Public Policy Engagement
Signed Investor Statement on Just Immigration Reform (Signed ICCR)
Immigrants account for approximately 19% of the U.S. workforce and are often regarded as the “rocket fuel” of the U.S. economy. Boston Common is paying close attention to calls for mass deportation and the resulting labor shortages that may impact a subset of portfolio companies that could struggle with a reduced workforce. In March, we signed a collaborative letter calling on companies and policymakers to support comprehensive immigration reform.
Asian Corporate Governance Network
In March, Boston Common joined the Asian Corporate Governance Network to advocate for annual corporate reports (Yuho) from Japanese FSA and METI to be released before Japan AGMs. This timing would provide investors with improved transparency and disclosures to inform decision-making. The letter supports AGMs scheduled later in the year to avoid the historical concentration issue.
This piece is intended as an editorial review of a survey of risk considerations and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including the risk of loss of principal.
Company developments described in this report occurred during the period of our engagement but should not be assumed to have resulted from Boston Common’s activities. Where we believe our engagement contributed to a development, we describe the basis for that assessment.
References to third-party research, publications, and data sources are provided for informational purposes only. Boston Common Asset Management does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of third-party information cited herein. Readers should consult original sources and qualified professional advisors before making any investment decision.
