As You Sow

Fourth time’s the charm? After 98% votes rejecting politically motivated efforts to end diverse hiring and promotion practices at Costco Wholesale, Apple, and John Deere, today The Walt Disney Company shareholders made their voices heard with a 99% vote to reject an attempt to force their company to underperform financially. These high-profile, epic failures will hopefully convince the anti-DEI crusade that investors make business choices based on business outcomes and not divisive politics. https://lnkd.in/e4GbeRp8

No matter where you stand on #DEI, there’s one thing we all actually agree on: Merit should be the deciding factor in hiring and promotions. Read our own Andy Behar’s essay in response to over 1,000 comments made on his recent interview on Fortune https://lnkd.in/eWdb5Qzv

Excited to share my first guest blog post for Ploughshares! In this piece I dive into the surprising ways weapons manufacturers can find their way into our retirement savings. I also discuss the ethical and financial implications of investing in these companies, emphasizing why it’s crucial to align our investments with our values. https://lnkd.in/gGKmD-wJ

At the moment, stakeholder?demands?and?the landscape for #corporateresponsibility are?anything but static.?A quickly changing?regulatory landscape is causing?companies to pause and?contemplate?how to strategically and efficiently navigate the future of their?corporate sustainability?strategies. Companies are dealing with complex and?sometimes?conflicting pressures from different regulatory authorities. How they respond and how they are benchmarked against their peers is increasingly material from a regulatory risk management perspective. How can As You Know help? ?? Actionable, high-quality regulatory risk data remains the key to bridging the gap between financial performance and ethical responsibility. ?? As You Know now offers curated, quarterly updates from our research team on whether companies in the Large Cap 3000 are changing their human capital management practices in response to changing regulatory pressures. For example, in our latest quarterly update (Q4 2024), close to 400 U.S. Large Caps had significant changes in their DEI disclosure levels, many which are currently subject to #CSRD compliance. Overall, there was more performance improvement than decline,?but that trends shows signs of a significant reversal in the current quarter. These quarterly updates from the As You Sow research team provide the best available insight on changing human capital management practices in the?Large?Cap 3000. Interested? ??Visit our most recent newsletter?(https://lnkd.in/ezT5hABT) to learn more. ??To license the?As You Know?dataset, learn more about the?actionable data and insights we offer, or to simply have a chat about the?world of #data, contact: Mersiha Causevic Podzic, CEO: [email protected].

Spoiler alert: yes, you can comfortably retire without investing in high-risk private prisons. https://lnkd.in/ekkeuJVh

ISS recently announced that it will no longer consider a board’s gender, racial, or ethnic diversity when making director election recommendations. It's a clear abdication to political pressure at the expense of clients and sets a path for intentional financial underperformance. https://lnkd.in/eC7yC3mr

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is right about the climate-insurance crisis: “If you fast-forward 10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage.” We would add that catastrophic losses from climate-fueled natural disasters are hurting homeowners – now! https://lnkd.in/gh4zc-9s

Shareholders have spoken: Deere shareholders voted 99% against an anti-DEI resolution, joining Apple and Costco in a “hat trick” of epic fails for activists fighting diversity programs. https://lnkd.in/exugAwFt

Shareholders near unanimous vote crushes anti-DEI shareholder proposal. How you like ‘dem Apples? https://lnkd.in/erXFuVNj

Say it with us, “anti-diversity groups are forcing companies to underperform.” Anyone who's looking at the data, which companies and shareholders are, concludes that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance. https://lnkd.in/ercUBg5p