Liontrust Responsible Capitalism Report 2022 - Flipbook - Page 26
Stewardship Activities –
Voting and Engagement
Voting
Over the last year, Liontrust voted at 98% of applicable meetings.
We voted at least a vote Against, Withhold or Abstain at 60% of
meetings, signalling our dissatisfaction with the proposals.
Liontrust operates a global voting policy which guides our voting
decisions across funds. We take a proportional approach to
governance expectations and therefore we have put in place
guidelines split by geographic region and market cap size. We
recognise that a major global oil company should be held to a
different standard to a small emerging market company although all
companies are encouraged to follow the highest standards. Liontrust
voting policies incorporate the following markets:
• United Kingdom (FTSE 350) and Ireland (ISEQ20);
• Europe excl. UK and Ireland;
• United States and Canada; and
• Rest of the World (Australia, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Hong
Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latin America,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South
Africa, South America, Taiwan, Thailand) and emerging markets
Exceptions apply for small global capitalised companies including
FTSE Small Cap and below/FTSE AIM and one of our investment
teams who vote in line with the relevant ISS benchmark policy in 2
areas due to predominately being exposed to smaller companies.
Appropriate alerts are applied to notify all teams if there is a
Special/Court meeting to ensure they are consulted on the
following proposals if there is a vote:
• Mergers & Acquisitions; related party transactions; mandatory
takeover bid waivers; reincorporation proposals; shareholder
proposals; and other non-routine items/controversial items.
26 - Liontrust Sustainability Report 2020
Engagement
Engagement is integral to many of our investment teams with regular
meetings with company management to discuss our investments.
We believe monitoring and engagement allow us to improve
our understanding of investee companies and their governance
structures so that our voting decisions may be better informed.
We believe that well-managed companies will report on material
social and environmental risks and opportunities and explain how
these are managed. At a minimum, we would expect companies
to comply with the accepted corporate governance standards in
their domestic market or to explain why not doing so is in the
interest of shareholders. As these are not always voting issues, we
may engage directly with company management or the board
where we believe there is the potential for a material impact on
shareholder returns.
We have adopted a case-by-case approach to engaging on material
governance, environmental or social issues in the past and are currently
finalising our company-wide engagement strategy. We also partake in
collaborate engagement with our peers on various ESG issues.
The Liontrust Corporate Governance & Proxy Voting Framework
is available on our website
https://liontrust.co.uk/gov-voting-framework
The Liontrust custom voting policies and quarterly voting
records’ are available on our website
https://liontrust.co.uk/investor-relations/governance