Sept 19 (Reuters) – The world’s two biggest asset managers sharply scaled back the number of meetings held with company bosses this year, disclosures show, as new guidance made it harder to discuss topics like climate change and diversity.
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Tallies in new disclosures show declines of 28% and 44% for BlackRock and Vanguard, respectively, compared to their meetings in year-ago periods.
Several consultants said the declines show how the guidance has quieted talks between shareholders and managers ahead of corporate elections on matters beyond politically contentious issues like climate change, such as directorships or executive pay.
“The new guidance, whether intentional or not, created a chilling effect on the largest investors,” said Peter da Silva Vint, a former BlackRock executive now with corporate adviser Jasper Street Partners.
Often fund managers come to meetings in “listen-only mode,” da Silva Vint said, which makes it harder for company leaders to tell how fund managers might vote.
Surprises matter. While climate and social questions have taken up less bandwidth at corporate annual meetings lately, items on corporate governance continue to win support. Both Vanguard and BlackRock ended support for nearly all climate and social resolutions in previous years, a pattern that continued in 2025.
TALK LESS, SMILE MORE
The reporting requirement could also be triggered if the fund firm “states or implies” it will not support directors unless a company makes changes in line with a fund’s voting policy.
An SEC representative declined to comment.
The shift mainly affected BlackRock and Vanguard, whose combined $22 trillion means both firms often own more than 5% of stock issuers, the filing threshold. The two firms paused and then resumed contact while taking stock of the new guidance.
Most of the proxy-related engagements would have happened after the Feb. 11 SEC guidance, said Paul Schulman, senior managing director for proxy solicitor Sodali. He called the guidance “100% the cause” of the meeting declines.
Schulman said even when meetings occur, stewardship teams say less about how they plan to cast their proxy votes. Top investment firms “have always been hesitant to disclose to the company how they’re going to vote. Now they’re hesitant to signal their thinking on the issues,” Schulman said.
BlackRock has not given a quarterly count of its meetings. In its recent report, it said at the meetings its stewardship team “listened to company directors and executives to understand how they are overseeing material business risks and opportunities,” and that it may convey concerns through its AGM votes.
Last year’s report paints BlackRock’s stewardship team as being more outspoken. Where it had concerns, the fund manager said at the time, “we typically raise these through dialogue with board members and management teams first.”
Asked for comment, a BlackRock representative noted its past statement that “does not use engagement as a way to control publicly traded companies.”
A Vanguard representative said the company “does not, and never has, used engagements with companies to signal our voting intentions.”
‘MORE CHALLENGING’ ENVIRONMENT
Paul Washington, chief executive of the Society for Corporate Governance, which represents corporate secretaries and others, said the new guidance limits the value of shareholder talks.
“This season companies found it harder to know what their major investors were thinking,” he said.
In a survey, more than a quarter of public company society members said they found a “more challenging engagement environment” this year with companies having trouble maintaining relationships with investors or exploring their views.
Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston Editing by Nick Zieminski
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Ross Kerber is U.S. Sustainable Business Correspondent for Reuters News, a beat he created to cover investors’ growing concern for environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and the response from executives and policymakers. Ross joined Reuters in 2009 after a decade at The Boston Globe and has written on topics including proxy voting by the largest asset managers, the corporate response to social movements like Black Lives Matter, and the backlash to ESG efforts by conservatives. He writes the weekly Reuters Sustainable Finance Newsletter.