Liontrust engagement and voting report 2021 - Flipbook - Page 8
Engagement strategy
Liontrust’s 2021 engagement strategy included engaging the highest
carbon-emitting companies, Global Compact compliance and gender
diversity on boards.
We also engaged heavily on board and committee composition
with FTSE small and micro-cap companies, often as a follow up
to our voting. Remuneration consultations also take up a lot of time
from an engagement perspective.
The Sustainable Investment team engages with its holdings directly
on ESG factors and has its own engagement priorities. The fund
managers of our other investment teams regularly discuss nonfinancial, E, S and G factors in their engagements with companies
but this is less structured. Liontrust’s Stewardship Manager leads the
engagements on the company-wide strategy. For a full overview
of the Sustainable Investment team’s progress on its engagement
priorities, see the team’s Engagement and Voting Report on our
website www.liontrust.co.uk.
Engagement with the highest
carbon-emitting companies
In 2021, Liontrust aimed to engage with the top five contributors to our
overall emissions, as indicated by our ESG service provider, MSCI.
We also met with Carbon Tracker and Industry Tracker to understand
some of the sector-specific nuances. Given the complexity of
the transition for these companies, most of the meetings were
held to understand the plans that were in place and to build an
understanding and view – as well as to inform our voting. During
the meetings, we questioned why certain decisions were made and
the levels of ambition undertaken. Over the course of the year’s
engagements, changes were made to the commitments and targets
set by some of our investee companies that we supported.
8 - Liontrust: Engagement and Voting Report 2021
We had many other meetings with companies on their carbon
reduction plans where requests were made to use science-based
targets and/or ensure they have appropriate short-medium-term
targets to track progress. We are pleased that many of our investee
companies announced net zero targets during the year and we
will be continuing this engagement into 2022 to ensure they have
set ambitious targets with clear plans to achieve them. We think
the relationships and understanding built up over time will lead to
greater influence in the medium term.