ExxonMobil rebel shareholders win board seats

Defying management, investors worried about climate change won at least two seats. 

By Steven Mufson May 26, 2021 washingtonpost.com

ExxonMobil shareholders voted Wednesday to install at least two new independent directors to the company’s board, a resounding defeat for chief executive Darren Woods and a ratification of shareholders’ unhappiness with the way the company had been addressing climate change and its lagging financial performance.

Woods tried to muster votes until the last minute, but failed to win backing for all of his proposed directors. In addition to the election of two new independent directors, the votes over two others from the dissident slate were too close to call. Both sides spent tens of millions of dollars on the hard-fought campaign.

At one point, ExxonMobil declared a one-hour recess in the annual meeting, a move many believed reflected ongoing negotiations over votes. “Stopping the vote was a pretty desperate move and usually portends a result the establishment does not want to happen,” said a former oil refining executive with experience at annual meetings.

The proxy campaign that rocked the 130-year-old oil behemoth was led by a young, relatively small hedge fund called Engine No. 1. But it quickly won the backing of the three biggest U.S. pension funds, the two biggest advisory services, and the three biggest fund managers. The three fund managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — hold more than 20 percent of the ExxonMobil’s shares.

BlackRock, the second largest shareholder, cast its votes against ExxonMobil management, Reuters reported. It wasn’t clear what decision Vanguard and State Street had made.

“The vote sends an unmistakable signal that climate action is a financial imperative and leading investors know it and are demanding change,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said. “This is a watershed moment for the oil and gas industry. It’s no longer tenable for companies like ExxonMobil to defy calls to align their businesses with decarbonizing the economy.”

“Investors are waking up,” Anne Simpson, managing investment director for board governance and sustainability at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, said in the run-up to the vote. “The sleeping giant maybe is stirring.”

Chevron investors also flexed their muscle on Wednesday, casting 61 percent of shares in favor of a proposal asking the oil major to cut its total greenhouse gas emissions, including customers’ emissions, a category known as “Scope 3” in addition to its own operations and supply chains. Shareholders voted 61 percent in favor of the proposal, according to a preliminary count announced by Chevron at its annual general meeting.

Separately, a Dutch court on Wednesday ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in a landmark case brought by climate activist groups. The Hague District Court ruled that the Anglo-Dutch energy giant has a duty to care about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that its current reduction plans were not concrete enough.

The decision could set a precedent for similar cases against polluting multinationals — including ExxonMobil, one of the biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters in the world. And the ruling marked a new assertion of judicial authority in a climate matter.

The ExxonMobil annual meeting was closely watched. In the six months since Engine No. 1 launched its campaign, ExxonMobil has steered its policy toward the rebel shareholders, unveiling a new low-carbon fuel division and reshuffling a couple of directors. It also unveiled a plan for a massive carbon capture and storage project in the Houston ship channel, but company officials said the federal government would have to finance it with subsidies.

But it wasn’t enough to stop the rebellion. In the run-up to the meeting, California Public Employees’ Retirement System filed a statement saying that “ExxonMobil’s shareholders have a first-of-its-kind opportunity to drive systemic change at the company by voting in support of the full alternate slate of directors to strengthen the board and contribute to the sustainable value of their investments.”

The brawl over directors was one of the sensitive points. Woods, responding to criticism that the board lacked anyone with expertise in the energy business, reached out for a new director who has experience with a state-owned company in Malaysia.

The Exxon chief executive disparaged the four directors Engine No. 1 put forward, saying they lacked top executive experience or energy experience. Yet the Engine No. 1 slate included two former chief executives and deep experience in the energy business.

The two who won election were Gregg Goff, former chief executive of the oil refining company Andeavor, and Kaisa Hietala, who began her career in oil and gas exploration and crude oil trading and who later served as the head of renewable products at Neste, a petroleum refining and marketing company, through 2019.

Goff had been named an outstanding chief executive by a Harvard Business School group. Stephen Brown, a former senior executive at Andeavor, was irked by Exxon’s disparagement of Goff. “I was fortunate enough to get to work with him closely on a number of things and what he taught me is invaluable to this day,” Brown said. “Exxon should be so lucky to get someone of his caliber.”

The vote was too close to call for the other two vying for independent spots on the ExxonMobil board. They were Alexander Karsner, a former Energy Department official for research and development and now a senior strategist at X, the innovation lab owned by Google parent company Alphabet, and Anders Runevad, former chief executive of Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems.