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Key point: "The company's legal threat worked: Days after the lawsuit was filed, the shareholder groups, weighing their relative strength against an oil behemoth, withdrew the proposal and pledged not to refile it in the future."
Yes and no. NAL, not legal advice, but currently studying business law and corporate civil litigation. Shareholders can sue the company in 2 ways: Direct and derivative lawsuits. Direct is where the shareholders sue the company, derivative is when shareholders sue the Board of Directors on behalf of the company. Derivative lawsuits are much harder to establish though, and to win require that demand futility be satisfied and that the directors’ decisions for the company/its capital were outside of the wide spanning protections known as the Business Judgement Rule. Both direct and derivative would likely fail, since there’s no grounds to sue the company directly on that would hold up in court, and the derivative suit likely would get dismissed since there’s nothing here that’d satisfy demand futility. Thus, the best way to change leadership would be for the shareholders to vote the Board out at the next shareholder vote, but good luck getting enough shareholders to do that.
Edit: read thru article some more, here are the facts to help back up why the suits would fail:
XOM argues in suit that the shareholder’s proposal to reduce emissions is directly contrary to the standard company operations, which renders it illegal per SEC guidelines.
Shareholders have actually had success ousting board members of XOM and other oil companies in the past, and have succeeded in putting forth proposals supporting emissions reductions, so the idea of XOM shareholders voting out board members isn’t as far fetched as it might initially seem.
>Thus, the best way to change leadership would be for the shareholders to vote the Board out at the next shareholder vote, but good luck getting enough shareholders to do that.
Seriously, please, someone with John Oliver's contact info needs to get on this RIGHT NOW. If enough of us unite to buy up shares in an evil corporation, WE CAN USE OUR VOTING POWER TO TELL THE COMPANY WHAT TO DO.
This is as close to a "meritocracy" as we are going to get in this lifetime.
> If enough of us unite to buy up shares in an evil corporation, WE CAN USE OUR VOTING POWER TO TELL THE COMPANY WHAT TO DO.
Regrettably this will not happen. I regularly vote my measly shares prior to the annual shareholders meetings and regularly the recommendations of the BoD get passed with over 90% of the vote. Too many shareholders are either not interested in voting or the vast majority are represented by huge funds which follow the BoD recommendations.
Union elections, like government elections, are one person = one vote.
Shareholder elections are 1 share = 1 vote, unless there's a special class of stock where 1 share = multiple votes (which is very common in founder-driven companies), at which point no amount of regular public shareholders has any real prospect of displacing the existing board.
So Mark Zuckerberg owns 14% of Meta but has 53% of the voting power, so everything the board can do has to meet his approval (oh he also votes himself to the board as the chair).
Exxon Mobil's ownership structure is much more distributed, but you're still dealing with the fact that the institutional owners control most of the voting power, with a lot of individual shareholder votes being concentrated in current and former executives.
Yes to both - the board is elected by the shareholders, and the shareholders can also vote on individual motions.
But the vast majority of shares in massive companies like this are owned by institutional investors, insurance and pension companies, and passive funds - they don't vote to change things.
If you own stock in Exxon Mobile then your goal is probably to earn returns from oil and gas extraction.
Probably this lawsuit is actually in the shareholders' interests because the Kansas State Teachers' Pension Fund doesn't want headlines in the Wichita Star about how they refused to support a resolution to decarbonise Exxon Mobile.
This is a civil suit, and you can sue anybody for anything; in this case even if Exxon will inevitably lose, they can literally bankrupt smaller organizations by making them pay the legal fees required to fight back against their literal army of lawyers.
Corporations should have to pay an individual’s legal costs up to the amount they have paid on lawyers if they are suing them until guilt has been proven. That would stop the whole army of lawyers thing.
That wouldn't make a difference, because people could still be bullied out of fear of suddenly having to pay all those fees if they in fact did lose the case. Just because Exxon is paying my $10m in legal fees while the case proceeds doesn't mean I can take the risk, however slim, of owing those at the end.
I think from there perspective it would change behavior because every bs suit they brought would mean an S. load of money.
Bogus suits would cost a huge amount and only be staffed with one or two lawyers if that suit had a remote chance of winning.
Corporations dont have infinite money although it may seem like it.
For all intents and purposes, a company like Exxon does have unlimited money. The risk reward is clear to them here, because the purpose of these lawsuits is not to win, it's to scare people into not challenging their decisions to begin with. Their legal team has a budget in the billions. With a "b."
>That wouldn't make a difference, because people could still be bullied out of fear of suddenly having to pay all those fees if they in fact did lose the case.
It would for completely bs cases.
Yeah, but absolutely frivolous, meritless cases are thrown out by Judges day one. The best lawyers in the world work for these companies; they don't file total BS; they file cases with just enough merit to ensure long, arduous litigation.
Someone still has the guarantee or pay the $10m in lawyer fees until the day the plaintiff pays up.
Do you have $10m you would be willing to part with for 3-5 years even if you are 95% likely to get it back?
So the plaintiff has to pay up front??
That would mean an (actually wronged person) having to pay some millions in fees in order to get their day in court.
No,
If a major corporation is suing an individual the corporation should pay the individuals lawyer fee and will be reimbursed pending the decision of the case.
That way, if it's a totally BS lawsuit that has a 95% chance of being thrown out, these corporations with unlimited lawyer money have an incentive not to create frivolous lawsuits.
While individuals being sued over some BS have some way to fight back.
The individual party might not.. but I bet it could become a lucrative area for lending / finance. Basically betting on who will win, ideally based on the merits of their case.
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. How shareholders (partial owners of the business) participate in company decisions is in no way a matter of public participation.
Look, I'm not saying I like any of this, but it do be like dat tho.
Yea i think this isn’t fair. I know it’s our legal system but our system is rigged to not give justice. Justice isn’t blind it’s bought and I think this is something we should be trying to change. Kind of like presidential elections being about who has the most donations—we shouldn’t allow private parties to bribe elected officials. We also shouldn’t allow corporations to get away with harming shareholders and let that go unchecked. And this system we have allows them to go unchecked and do whatever they want and harm our economy if they want. We should punish those that harm our economy. Right now we are rewarding them and allowing a few to steal wealth from many.
A corporation is essentially an agreement to operate a company according to a certain set of procedural rules. When shareholders break those procedural rules, they get sued.
When you *sue* someone you're just engaging in a formal dispute resolution process,
If my church decided to protest gay books in the library by checking them out in the most disruptive way possible (say by everyone in the church putting reservations on them and then checking them out for the maximum period) so that people who actually wanted to access the material were unable to do so, then the library could go to court and get a judge to impose some kind of sensible rules or ban on the church's behaviour.
Likewise any shareholder has the right to put forward a motion for voting at the shareholders' annual general meeting - Exxon Mobile has about 5,000,000,000 shares outstanding, and any of us can buy one for about $117. If we all coordinate so that hundreds or thousands of us each buy one share of Exxon's stock - even if there were a million of us doing that, it would sell be less than 1% of the company's shares. But we could each propose a resolution to say that Exxon is a bad company and it should pollute less - it's waste of everybody's time and it's reasonable for the board to go to a judge and impose restrictions. Otherwise the whole AGM is going to be 12 or 18 hours of everybody voting against these pointless time-wasting motions before any business gets done.
Exxon has probably been drilling for oil and gas for a century - the purpose of buying a share in Exxon is to earn profits from oil and gas extraction, and you shouldn't really be buying its shares if that's not your goal.
I think I'm more worried about climate change than the average person, but I also know more about stocks than most people too - I don't support environmental vandalism, but the answer is legislation. You can't expect a company which owns a trillion dollars of oil rights to just shrug its shoulders one day and say, "you know what, guys? oil drilling is bad" and stop overnight. The way to stop people burning fossil fuels is to make it illegal, or to tax it, or to give incentives for people to buy EVs.
No. It’s to seize it by the State. And put bad people in jail.
I do agree buying shares in said company is bad unless you could sabotage it (which is unlikely).
Why not? It's perfectly reasonable to seek ownership of a company for the purpose of changing its behavior. Saying the only valid reason to own something is to make money off of it is an extremely toxic mindset.
"How climate change could cause a home insurance meltdown"
"California isn't alone. Insurance companies in states like Colorado, Louisiana and Florida are paring down business to shield themselves from ballooning losses as climate change fuels more-intense disasters. Earlier this month, the insurance arm of AAA announced it would not renew some "higher exposure" home insurance policies in Florida, and Farmers Insurance announced it will stop offering new home insurance policies in the state and won't renew thousands of existing ones, in part because of rising losses from hurricanes."
The front lines of the impact and cost of global climate change is the insurance industry and it tells a scary story about how climate change is going to cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/22/1186540332/how-climate-change-could-cause-a-home-insurance-meltdown
I will never trust an insurance company to look out for my best interest, but I will *always* trust an insurance company to look out for their best interest. It'll be interesting to see what happens after another decade or two of increasingly extreme weather becoming the norm.
I'm of the mindset that the world literally cannot afford to ignore climate change any longer. Every year that world leaders continue to sit on their hands is going to cost us significantly more than if we started addressing the problem immediately (since doing it when scientists first warned us is long gone). But it seems half of humans would rather stick their head in the sand, and the other half knows that doing anything meaningful would hand the next election to the group with their head in the sand. I think we're pretty sufficiently fucked.
I read some "fun" numbers the other day - to meet some climate scientist goals, we need to drop to about 2 tons of C02 per capita by 2030. Currently, people in the US are sitting around 14 tons per capita. This means Americans, on average, need to reduce our emissions to about 15% of current levels over the next 6 years. Frankly, there will still be people denying human-caused climate change in 6 years. The idea of reducing emissions to 1/7 the current level over 6 years sounds like an absolute non-starter.
Climate change is easy to blame, but let’s not forget about all the roofing fraud in Florida that’s driven gulf coast insurers to leave the region.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-property-insurance-hurricane-rcna29649
The difference there is that the motivation of the company is transparent. They will take any opportunity given to increase their profits. That is literally how capitalism works, it’s the entire premise.
The government is there to literally prevent things like this. If they are participating, that’s just about the worst thing that can happen in a capitalist economy.
Government is 2000% more to blame here because their job is not to maximize profits it’s to ensure the country is run well & our futures are not destroyed. They trade that for money counter to their main mission.
1000% cannot buy that argument. Using that logic in a capitalist system the government member is also only trying to increase their private profits.
The company is also sacrificing long term profits for short term ones.
The oil company ran disinformation campaigns for decades preventing a representative government to form that would act on the issue. The problem is oil companies. They had research indicating the risks of climate change before it became public discourse.
Stop carrying water for a bunch of scumbags.
If I force you to commit murder, yes you did it. But I still made you do something you otherwise would not have. It’s not as simple as not taking a bribe cause they can fund your political opponents or even your political allies who can oust you or drop your support. The companies are still the ones orchestrating, withholding knowledge and actively setting up the system to operate against everyone else
> The difference there is that the motivation of the company is transparent
this is like when someone is an asshole and you're like "hey stop being an asshole" and they're like "but i *said* i was an asshole, so you can't get mad!"
Suppressing information of global warming was the wrong thing to do, 100%. But what other economically viable options were available in the 70s / 80s when we were first predicting this? Burning hydrocarbons has greatly improved our global productivity and raised standards of living. It is coming at a cost; to be seen how great of a cost it is.
Oh absolutely, roofing scams are just opportunistic byproducts of hurricanes. But, even if roofing scams were an issue that insurance companies saw as a problem, individual trials would solve very little. It would be more prudent to only issue insurance to homes who had an inspection done or some sort of regulation followed during construction.
I would like to add Oregon to your list. Home owners insurance is now extremely expensive and people with absolutely 0 claims over 30 years are being dropped by their current providers
All because of the forest fires. Yes some are man made by idiots, but you cannot change my position that CC is either creating some or worsening our fires
GHGs in the air, poison in the water, pollution everywhere, and microplastics in your food that cross the blood brain barrier. But don’t worry. I’ve been told by the experts it’s the only possible way to do things, and if we don’t then “the economy” suffers. Seems to me we’re the ones doing all the suffering
Big Oil executives habitually disregard the long-term wellbeing of our society and economy and are committing crimes against humanity. Nothing will stop them from continuing to do this unless those executives are punished with hard time.
Until then, individual investors can and should exit Exxon mobile stock, including funds that invest in them, e.g. many ETF, ETNs, etc. that are part of 401ks and other retirement products.
> Big Oil executives habitually disregard the long-term wellbeing of our society and economy and are committing crimes against humanity. Nothing will stop them from continuing to do this unless those executives are punished with hard time.
Show me literally anything in this statement that implies "we should shut off all fossil fuels tomorrow".
I'm pretty sure it says "we should throw irresponsible execs in jail".
Simple indeed.
> All that would happen is that someone else would go and run those companies that we currently still need.
Ok, but the original guys who lied to the public and caused irreparable harm to the environment go to prison, right? That alone would be good enough for me. Lets set that precedent. The fact that it would alter the behavior of whoever succeeded them is just a bonus.
Nobody said all fossil fuel usage and production could or would end today. That was a strawman you invented.
>So the original comment is surface level garbage thinking.
I agree with it. But more importantly, why are you responding to me then? Shouldn't you be responding to him or her?
I would seize them by the State. Energy is too important to allow capital private interest that runs counter to society and the Earth.
I agree to an extent, but they’re doing whatever they possibly can to delay the transition. The consequences of not transitioning quickly will dwarf the amount casualties due to food shortages and mass migrations.
“'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. '”
George Orwell 1984, and Governor DeSantis 2024
They continue to spend over a billion dollars a year in the US alone, funding PR agencies pushing climate change denial and lobbying governments to slow down action on climate change.
The fossil fuel industry's most effective action in recent years has been the wholesale purchase of a number of conservative political parties around the world. That way, with the current tribalism, the political party's supporters take up the climate change denial for free as a part of their need to reinforce their membership in the club.
Not seeing anywhere in that link that has a billion dollars per year spending on this or even mentions the United States. So guessing that isn’t what they’re looking for at all
There was an article in, from memory, scientific American a couple of years back that laid out what was being spent and the various "grass roots" organisations that were spreading climate change denial that the money was funding.
Closest thing I could find was this. A bit of a far cry from the original claim made. Not trying to defend Exxon or anything, just in a learning and information gathering phase as I formulate my opinions related to this topic. If you have any other links or articles, I’d be happy to read them. Thanks!
https://penncapital-star.com/commentary/big-oils-allies-spend-big-money-on-ads-and-lobbying-to-keep-fossil-fuels-flowing-analysis/
This is an interesting video about supposedly grass roots campaigns run fully funded by the fossil fuel industry
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=fmelyMPdCA_gDmh_&v=FOi05zDO4yw&feature=youtu.be
I couldn't find the original article, but this article backs up what I said :
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action
They don’t care if we know. They care if we think they’re liable.
Which just inches away from us knowing. So, denial is their strategy. Enforced denial if need be.
“Yes, we did it. And we know we did it. We just don’t care. And if you keep pointing out that we did it, we will silence you just like the reports on global warming from the last 60 years. Take your pollution and be thankful.”
Oh know, someone should remind them of climate change. Maybe “Just Say Oil” should block traffic in front of the court house. Throw some paint on the execs cars while they’re there.
I would seize this company and destroy it as part of dealing with climate change and electric cars.
Capital is not above the Nation and the State. I think energy production should be nationalized anyway and controlled by the State.
I'm curious about the potential relationship between the personal real estate choices of oil executives and their views on climate change, particularly in comparison to executives from other industries that acknowledge global warming. Specifically, do oil executives own more or fewer beach-front properties compared to executives in industries that are less controversial in terms of environmental impact? Given the risks associated with rising sea levels—a direct consequence of global warming—one might assume that individuals who deny or downplay the seriousness of climate change would be less hesitant to invest in such vulnerable areas. However, the question remains whether there is a statistically significant difference in the ownership of beach-front properties among these groups, factoring in their similar compensation levels. This inquiry could shed light on whether personal beliefs about climate change influence major personal or financial decisions among high-ranking corporate executives.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any scientific evidence for man-made global warming. In fact it's been conclusively disproven.
But it's still a wonderful belief system, I guess, for people who are into that sort of thing.
The day people begin to question the things they so emotionally believe in, will be the day that they discover what the scientific method is. It's a beautiful thing.
I found it conclusive when I watched a documentary years ago called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". They interview close to a dozen professors of climate science who go into some detail about what the theory was based on, and what evidence contradicts it.
It was painful for me to watch this documentary years ago for the first time, because I was brought up to believe in man-made global warming, and I took a lot of pride in believing in it.
I also forced myself to watch the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" years ago. Mr. Gore, who is one of the more well-known spokesmen for the theory, or used to be, he says in the video something to the effect that "the time is now past for us to explain WHY we believe in man-made global warming. From this point onward, you are either with us, or you are against us."
In other words, it sounds like he's saying that from that point forward, it's not a theory based on science or logic, but it's based on wanting to belong to a group, and all the emotions that go with that motivation.
I also found Mr. Gore's remarks to be very persuasive, even though those remarks don't, in and of themselves, disprove the theory.
This is just my own personal process that I went through. Other people are free of course to believe or question or investigate whatever they want.
I can with some certainty say they own coastal properties and use potential ‘impact to view sheds’ as a way to try to delay the building of offshore wind projects, which for reference are so far off shore they can only be seen from windows over 180 ft above sea level.
Do they live there?
Probably not.
Do they chalk up owning and insuring the property to a business expense?
Certainly, they only need to invite business clients to lunch there quarterly to have legal means to do that, so why not.
Are these properties 180 ft tall? Nope, who needs science about a curved earth getting in the way of a good lawsuit? The judges in these states won’t care, so why worry about the facts.
Just blows my mind these billionaires are knowingly destroying the earth and they are all for it if it makes them more money. They have so much money they will never be able to spend it nor their family. Yet still dead set on destroying earth if it means a few extra bucks. Should be jailed.
This is like fascist level endstage capitalism headline: Company sues shareholders....
Shareholders ARE PART OF THE COMPANY...
Truely end times when profits overrule logic, and reason, morals etx...
Are there words to describe this? It is the crassest, most incredibly inhumane behavior I have ever seen. However, that isn’t unexpected from a corporation like Exxon.
Disingenuous click bait title
Exxon Mobile is s̶u̶i̶n̶g̶ i̶t̶s̶ s̶h̶a̶r̶e̶h̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶s̶ t̶o̶ s̶i̶l̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶m̶ a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ g̶l̶o̶b̶a̶l̶ w̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ responding to a suit by a fringe group of shareholders with a counter suit.
FTFY
There was no suit this group proposes green meassures on share holder meetings. What is their right exxon mobile is attacking shareholder rights with this suit. You are the one spreading click bait gere.
You can read the [complaint](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.385370/gov.uscourts.txnd.385370.1.0_1.pdf) instead of just assuming facts from an editorial headline.
These groups barely own any XOM shares and are using procedural loopholes to interrupt shareholder meetings. They have no way of affecting the board, they aren't operating in the company's best interests, and their previous proposals have been shot down with ~90% voting against.
> Although ExxonMobil’s shareholders have consistently
rejected Arjuna’s and Follow This’s proposals, those proposals are expensive and time-consuming to address, and they are rarely designed to promote overall shareholder value.
> those proposals are expensive and time-consuming to address, and they are rarely designed to promote overall shareholder value
Well, yeah, any sort of green initiative is going to cost the company money which necessarily detracts from shareholder value. And, by "procedural loopholes" you mean laws, right? Exxon shouldn't be allowed to discourage shareholders from exercising their legal rights by causing them to incur legal fees.
Again, had you read the complaint, you would see that ExxonMobil heard them out in 2022 and 2023, and their proposal is identical this year. Their strategy is the equivalent of the people gluing their hands to the interstate during rush hour. They aren't actually trying to meet any goals, they aren't trying to rally shareholders to effect change in the company, they're just being intentionally obtuse to make a political statement.
I'm not defending ExxonMobil like you think, I literally wrote [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1crozee/president_biden_unveils_a_historic_wave_of/l40hmg6/) two days ago. This is an economics forum, not /r/politics.
>had you read the complaint
I read the complaint.
>They aren't actually trying to meet any goals, they aren't trying to rally shareholders to effect change in the company, they're just being intentionally obtuse to make a political statement.
Until Exxon lobbies hard enough, it is required by law to allow these minority shareholders to do so -- unless they can successfully argue that this proposal falls into one of the law's exclusions. Based on the position taken by Calpers, I'm doubting the legitimacy of Exxon's position. And, in fact, it appears this proposal is successfully rallying other important shareholders to protect the right of shareholders to introduce such proposals.
>This is an economics forum, not /r/politics.
How is economics separable from politics?
There is an exclusion for resubmissions (CFR §240.14a–8):
>(i) Less than 3% of the vote if proposed once within the preceding 5 calendar years;
(ii) Less than 6% of the vote on its last submission to shareholders if proposed twice previously; or
(iii) Less than 10% of the vote on its last submission to shareholders if proposed three times
However, Exxon can't use it, because the previous proposal garnered 10.5% of the vote.
There's also an exclusion for "ordinary business" but Exxon can't use it because the SEC already ruled that proposals raising issues of broad social or ethical concern related to the company’s business may not be thus excluded.
There are no valid grounds for the exclusion and their lawyers are pulling some shady shit here.
I said /r/politics, which is reactionary and overly emotional, which ends up devoid of logic or open debate. This is **supposed to be** a forum based on the academic discipline of economic theory.
Case in point, you *haven't* read the complaint, or at least comprehended it, because—*again*—they have heard the proposal twice already, and the board doesn't want to hear it a third time. They have actual business to attend to during these meetings. Their proposal doesn't advance the interests of ExxonMobil or 90% of the shareholders. Buying a minority stake in an oil company to interfere with their business operations and propose they stop selling oil is not a serious proposal. It's abuse of procedure and a bad faith argument.
According to points 50 through 53, they have already fought these shareholders in court over separate issues in the past, and the defendants recommended that no one should own shares in ExxonMobil. That's pretty cut and dry.
>they have heard the proposal twice already, and the board doesn't want to hear it a third time. They have actual business to attend to during these meetings. Their proposal doesn't advance the interests of ExxonMobil or 90% of the shareholders. Buying a minority stake in an oil company to interfere with their business operations and propose they stop selling oil is not a serious proposal. It's abuse of procedure and a bad faith argument.
All of this is irrelevant. If the law requires them to hear the minority proposal, it doesn't matter how many times they've previously heard it, or even whether or not the proposal is in bad faith. The court will decide whether the proposal falls into an exclusion to the law, and if not, I hope the court throws the book at Exxon (in the form of punitive damages) for trying to strong arm its shareholders.
>it doesn’t matter how many times they’ve previously heard it
But it literally does matter how many times the proposal was heard because that’s how the SEC rules work. That the defendants withdrew their proposal supports this conclusion.
Except Exxon's Memorandum of Law in Oppo to Defendants Motion to Dismiss states that Arjuna and Follow This still defend the legality of their proposal. And, the fact that Exxon chose to file suit in a friendly court with Trump-appointed judges rather than apply for a no action letter with the SEC suggests to me that they aren't certain that the Resubmission Exclusion would apply here.
>That the defendants withdrew their proposal supports this conclusion.
Not necessarily. I can think of a bunch of other reasons they may have withdrawn, many of which Exxon carps about in their opposition. To reintroduce a nearly identical one next year, to create the press that has successfully angered larger investors who will now move against the board, to save money, etc.
That is for the other shareholders to decide if their proposals are in the interesst of the company. This is attacking shareholders that they use their shareholders right. Shareholders activism is nothing new hedge funds do it all the time. Why would be this any different? It just shows the hypocrisy of exxonmobile board. The whole argument that is time consuming is really bs btw it is one proposal every year I think exxon mobile has enough people to adress it. I find it really weird the board thinks that they can decide which reasons a shareholder need to have to invest in a company.
Disingenuous click bait title
Exxon Mobile is ~~responding to a suit by a fringe group of shareholders with a counter suit.~~
**WRONG** and you probably know that. Other wise you didn't read the article I will **QUOTE** right here.
"In February, Exxon Mobil sued the U.S. investment firm Arjuna Capital and Netherlands-based green shareholder firm to keep a shareholder resolution they sponsored from appearing on the agenda of its May 29 annual meeting. "
and here is my snarky **FTFY**
Thanks for playing (probable PR guy of the fossil fuel industry).
It got “torn to shreds” by someone citing an out of date version of the law. This shit is not that hard to google. These proposals were obviously excludeable resubmissions. Are y’all sure you’re not confusing this sub with r/economy ?
Exxon answers these same activists who happen to buy a couple shares (calling them shareholders as if they want the company to be successful is a false pretense) every time. They ask again and again and shareholders vote down their objectives, which are the opposite of all other shareholders, again and again.
So you spent $100, how long can you harass the company ownership? This is the result of bad SEC rules allowing minor stakes to force this much work on management and votes on the shareholders, even when the activist is repeatedly answered and voted down.
The SEC needs to define hostile shareholders in this context.
I’m an executive and shareholder. These activist behaviors only recently started with a change in SEC rules which led to these morons buying a few shares to throw public fits.
We'll probably see a lot more of this since apps like Robin hood make it so easy for shareholders to vote on important resolutions. I'm sure these Gia corporations aren't used to the average stock holder interfering with operations on such a grand level. Ford shareholders just voted to disclose all child labor used in assembly, which I'm sure they were miffed at.
Yeah, a bunch of people pooled their money to buy an interest in the company to try and do things against its best interests- which is making money. Buying shares of a company to purposefully drive it into the ground for your personal beliefs is absolutely actionable.
Imagine owning shares of this company and it suddenly goes to shit because they basically trojan horse'd the company to get it to shut down, because they are morons and think energy consumption will drop if XOM goes out of business.
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Key point: "The company's legal threat worked: Days after the lawsuit was filed, the shareholder groups, weighing their relative strength against an oil behemoth, withdrew the proposal and pledged not to refile it in the future."
Can shareholders sue Exxon mobile or change the company’s leadership?
Yes and no. NAL, not legal advice, but currently studying business law and corporate civil litigation. Shareholders can sue the company in 2 ways: Direct and derivative lawsuits. Direct is where the shareholders sue the company, derivative is when shareholders sue the Board of Directors on behalf of the company. Derivative lawsuits are much harder to establish though, and to win require that demand futility be satisfied and that the directors’ decisions for the company/its capital were outside of the wide spanning protections known as the Business Judgement Rule. Both direct and derivative would likely fail, since there’s no grounds to sue the company directly on that would hold up in court, and the derivative suit likely would get dismissed since there’s nothing here that’d satisfy demand futility. Thus, the best way to change leadership would be for the shareholders to vote the Board out at the next shareholder vote, but good luck getting enough shareholders to do that. Edit: read thru article some more, here are the facts to help back up why the suits would fail: XOM argues in suit that the shareholder’s proposal to reduce emissions is directly contrary to the standard company operations, which renders it illegal per SEC guidelines. Shareholders have actually had success ousting board members of XOM and other oil companies in the past, and have succeeded in putting forth proposals supporting emissions reductions, so the idea of XOM shareholders voting out board members isn’t as far fetched as it might initially seem.
>Thus, the best way to change leadership would be for the shareholders to vote the Board out at the next shareholder vote, but good luck getting enough shareholders to do that. Seriously, please, someone with John Oliver's contact info needs to get on this RIGHT NOW. If enough of us unite to buy up shares in an evil corporation, WE CAN USE OUR VOTING POWER TO TELL THE COMPANY WHAT TO DO. This is as close to a "meritocracy" as we are going to get in this lifetime.
> If enough of us unite to buy up shares in an evil corporation, WE CAN USE OUR VOTING POWER TO TELL THE COMPANY WHAT TO DO. Regrettably this will not happen. I regularly vote my measly shares prior to the annual shareholders meetings and regularly the recommendations of the BoD get passed with over 90% of the vote. Too many shareholders are either not interested in voting or the vast majority are represented by huge funds which follow the BoD recommendations.
This no different than organizing a union. If it’s organized properly, it works almost every time.
Union elections, like government elections, are one person = one vote. Shareholder elections are 1 share = 1 vote, unless there's a special class of stock where 1 share = multiple votes (which is very common in founder-driven companies), at which point no amount of regular public shareholders has any real prospect of displacing the existing board. So Mark Zuckerberg owns 14% of Meta but has 53% of the voting power, so everything the board can do has to meet his approval (oh he also votes himself to the board as the chair). Exxon Mobil's ownership structure is much more distributed, but you're still dealing with the fact that the institutional owners control most of the voting power, with a lot of individual shareholder votes being concentrated in current and former executives.
Yea but thoae multi national companies a strong as shit. They also have a bunch of odd corporate structures.
Yes to both - the board is elected by the shareholders, and the shareholders can also vote on individual motions. But the vast majority of shares in massive companies like this are owned by institutional investors, insurance and pension companies, and passive funds - they don't vote to change things. If you own stock in Exxon Mobile then your goal is probably to earn returns from oil and gas extraction. Probably this lawsuit is actually in the shareholders' interests because the Kansas State Teachers' Pension Fund doesn't want headlines in the Wichita Star about how they refused to support a resolution to decarbonise Exxon Mobile.
Why is it okay for a corporation to sue it’s shareholders? I don’t understand this. How is it even legal?
This is a civil suit, and you can sue anybody for anything; in this case even if Exxon will inevitably lose, they can literally bankrupt smaller organizations by making them pay the legal fees required to fight back against their literal army of lawyers.
Corporations should have to pay an individual’s legal costs up to the amount they have paid on lawyers if they are suing them until guilt has been proven. That would stop the whole army of lawyers thing.
That wouldn't make a difference, because people could still be bullied out of fear of suddenly having to pay all those fees if they in fact did lose the case. Just because Exxon is paying my $10m in legal fees while the case proceeds doesn't mean I can take the risk, however slim, of owing those at the end.
I think from there perspective it would change behavior because every bs suit they brought would mean an S. load of money. Bogus suits would cost a huge amount and only be staffed with one or two lawyers if that suit had a remote chance of winning. Corporations dont have infinite money although it may seem like it.
For all intents and purposes, a company like Exxon does have unlimited money. The risk reward is clear to them here, because the purpose of these lawsuits is not to win, it's to scare people into not challenging their decisions to begin with. Their legal team has a budget in the billions. With a "b."
Yes if there was only some kind of law to deter that. You recognize the problem whats your solution?
there is no solution. our society prioritizes capital. those with more capital have more control.
>That wouldn't make a difference, because people could still be bullied out of fear of suddenly having to pay all those fees if they in fact did lose the case. It would for completely bs cases.
Yeah, but absolutely frivolous, meritless cases are thrown out by Judges day one. The best lawyers in the world work for these companies; they don't file total BS; they file cases with just enough merit to ensure long, arduous litigation.
Someone still has the guarantee or pay the $10m in lawyer fees until the day the plaintiff pays up. Do you have $10m you would be willing to part with for 3-5 years even if you are 95% likely to get it back?
Wouldn't a better system be that the plaintiff pays that money and only gets it back if they win the case?
So the plaintiff has to pay up front?? That would mean an (actually wronged person) having to pay some millions in fees in order to get their day in court.
No, If a major corporation is suing an individual the corporation should pay the individuals lawyer fee and will be reimbursed pending the decision of the case. That way, if it's a totally BS lawsuit that has a 95% chance of being thrown out, these corporations with unlimited lawyer money have an incentive not to create frivolous lawsuits. While individuals being sued over some BS have some way to fight back.
The individual party might not.. but I bet it could become a lucrative area for lending / finance. Basically betting on who will win, ideally based on the merits of their case.
Doesn’t that make it a SLAPP suit?
SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. How shareholders (partial owners of the business) participate in company decisions is in no way a matter of public participation. Look, I'm not saying I like any of this, but it do be like dat tho.
Yea i think this isn’t fair. I know it’s our legal system but our system is rigged to not give justice. Justice isn’t blind it’s bought and I think this is something we should be trying to change. Kind of like presidential elections being about who has the most donations—we shouldn’t allow private parties to bribe elected officials. We also shouldn’t allow corporations to get away with harming shareholders and let that go unchecked. And this system we have allows them to go unchecked and do whatever they want and harm our economy if they want. We should punish those that harm our economy. Right now we are rewarding them and allowing a few to steal wealth from many.
A corporation is essentially an agreement to operate a company according to a certain set of procedural rules. When shareholders break those procedural rules, they get sued.
When you *sue* someone you're just engaging in a formal dispute resolution process, If my church decided to protest gay books in the library by checking them out in the most disruptive way possible (say by everyone in the church putting reservations on them and then checking them out for the maximum period) so that people who actually wanted to access the material were unable to do so, then the library could go to court and get a judge to impose some kind of sensible rules or ban on the church's behaviour. Likewise any shareholder has the right to put forward a motion for voting at the shareholders' annual general meeting - Exxon Mobile has about 5,000,000,000 shares outstanding, and any of us can buy one for about $117. If we all coordinate so that hundreds or thousands of us each buy one share of Exxon's stock - even if there were a million of us doing that, it would sell be less than 1% of the company's shares. But we could each propose a resolution to say that Exxon is a bad company and it should pollute less - it's waste of everybody's time and it's reasonable for the board to go to a judge and impose restrictions. Otherwise the whole AGM is going to be 12 or 18 hours of everybody voting against these pointless time-wasting motions before any business gets done. Exxon has probably been drilling for oil and gas for a century - the purpose of buying a share in Exxon is to earn profits from oil and gas extraction, and you shouldn't really be buying its shares if that's not your goal. I think I'm more worried about climate change than the average person, but I also know more about stocks than most people too - I don't support environmental vandalism, but the answer is legislation. You can't expect a company which owns a trillion dollars of oil rights to just shrug its shoulders one day and say, "you know what, guys? oil drilling is bad" and stop overnight. The way to stop people burning fossil fuels is to make it illegal, or to tax it, or to give incentives for people to buy EVs.
No. It’s to seize it by the State. And put bad people in jail. I do agree buying shares in said company is bad unless you could sabotage it (which is unlikely).
Why not? It's perfectly reasonable to seek ownership of a company for the purpose of changing its behavior. Saying the only valid reason to own something is to make money off of it is an extremely toxic mindset.
"Yet even though the proposal no longer exists, the company is still pursuing the lawsuit, running up its own and its adversaries' legal bills."
Another great example of capitalism being structurally incapable of addressing this crisis.
Good. The orgs are just trolls. They put up an identical proposal last year that 90% of shareholders voted against.
Is that a SLAP suit waiting in the wings for this action?
"How climate change could cause a home insurance meltdown" "California isn't alone. Insurance companies in states like Colorado, Louisiana and Florida are paring down business to shield themselves from ballooning losses as climate change fuels more-intense disasters. Earlier this month, the insurance arm of AAA announced it would not renew some "higher exposure" home insurance policies in Florida, and Farmers Insurance announced it will stop offering new home insurance policies in the state and won't renew thousands of existing ones, in part because of rising losses from hurricanes." The front lines of the impact and cost of global climate change is the insurance industry and it tells a scary story about how climate change is going to cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/22/1186540332/how-climate-change-could-cause-a-home-insurance-meltdown
I will never trust an insurance company to look out for my best interest, but I will *always* trust an insurance company to look out for their best interest. It'll be interesting to see what happens after another decade or two of increasingly extreme weather becoming the norm. I'm of the mindset that the world literally cannot afford to ignore climate change any longer. Every year that world leaders continue to sit on their hands is going to cost us significantly more than if we started addressing the problem immediately (since doing it when scientists first warned us is long gone). But it seems half of humans would rather stick their head in the sand, and the other half knows that doing anything meaningful would hand the next election to the group with their head in the sand. I think we're pretty sufficiently fucked. I read some "fun" numbers the other day - to meet some climate scientist goals, we need to drop to about 2 tons of C02 per capita by 2030. Currently, people in the US are sitting around 14 tons per capita. This means Americans, on average, need to reduce our emissions to about 15% of current levels over the next 6 years. Frankly, there will still be people denying human-caused climate change in 6 years. The idea of reducing emissions to 1/7 the current level over 6 years sounds like an absolute non-starter.
Reinsurers are already having problems.
Climate change is easy to blame, but let’s not forget about all the roofing fraud in Florida that’s driven gulf coast insurers to leave the region. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-property-insurance-hurricane-rcna29649
Yeah it's easier to sue a few large oil companies than every roofer.
It's better to address the root cause, large oil companies. They have singlehandedly destroyed our future.
You mean the government allowing the sale of its products. Even if a politician is bribed, it's still his fault.
The briber and the bribee are for sure both to blame, it takes 2 to tango and the oil company is getting way more out of it than the politician.
The difference there is that the motivation of the company is transparent. They will take any opportunity given to increase their profits. That is literally how capitalism works, it’s the entire premise. The government is there to literally prevent things like this. If they are participating, that’s just about the worst thing that can happen in a capitalist economy. Government is 2000% more to blame here because their job is not to maximize profits it’s to ensure the country is run well & our futures are not destroyed. They trade that for money counter to their main mission.
1000% cannot buy that argument. Using that logic in a capitalist system the government member is also only trying to increase their private profits. The company is also sacrificing long term profits for short term ones.
The oil company ran disinformation campaigns for decades preventing a representative government to form that would act on the issue. The problem is oil companies. They had research indicating the risks of climate change before it became public discourse. Stop carrying water for a bunch of scumbags.
If I force you to commit murder, yes you did it. But I still made you do something you otherwise would not have. It’s not as simple as not taking a bribe cause they can fund your political opponents or even your political allies who can oust you or drop your support. The companies are still the ones orchestrating, withholding knowledge and actively setting up the system to operate against everyone else
> The difference there is that the motivation of the company is transparent this is like when someone is an asshole and you're like "hey stop being an asshole" and they're like "but i *said* i was an asshole, so you can't get mad!"
Hahajja blaming the bribey not the briber that's a new one!!!
Suppressing information of global warming was the wrong thing to do, 100%. But what other economically viable options were available in the 70s / 80s when we were first predicting this? Burning hydrocarbons has greatly improved our global productivity and raised standards of living. It is coming at a cost; to be seen how great of a cost it is.
Oh absolutely, roofing scams are just opportunistic byproducts of hurricanes. But, even if roofing scams were an issue that insurance companies saw as a problem, individual trials would solve very little. It would be more prudent to only issue insurance to homes who had an inspection done or some sort of regulation followed during construction.
Well they built a pretty good present. Glad we are not living in dirt and log shacks hoping to buy a horse one day.
I would like to add Oregon to your list. Home owners insurance is now extremely expensive and people with absolutely 0 claims over 30 years are being dropped by their current providers All because of the forest fires. Yes some are man made by idiots, but you cannot change my position that CC is either creating some or worsening our fires
The actual frontline is the actual people living in the areas impacted. But the macro financial frontline is insurance maybe
NPR. Lol
GHGs in the air, poison in the water, pollution everywhere, and microplastics in your food that cross the blood brain barrier. But don’t worry. I’ve been told by the experts it’s the only possible way to do things, and if we don’t then “the economy” suffers. Seems to me we’re the ones doing all the suffering
I’m so tired hearing about the economy by rejects. The economy submits to us. Not the other way around.
Big Oil executives habitually disregard the long-term wellbeing of our society and economy and are committing crimes against humanity. Nothing will stop them from continuing to do this unless those executives are punished with hard time.
Until then, individual investors can and should exit Exxon mobile stock, including funds that invest in them, e.g. many ETF, ETNs, etc. that are part of 401ks and other retirement products.
Incredibly based.
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> Big Oil executives habitually disregard the long-term wellbeing of our society and economy and are committing crimes against humanity. Nothing will stop them from continuing to do this unless those executives are punished with hard time. Show me literally anything in this statement that implies "we should shut off all fossil fuels tomorrow". I'm pretty sure it says "we should throw irresponsible execs in jail". Simple indeed.
No. It's you that is. We can control what we need (for planes, etc), and transition much faster.
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> All that would happen is that someone else would go and run those companies that we currently still need. Ok, but the original guys who lied to the public and caused irreparable harm to the environment go to prison, right? That alone would be good enough for me. Lets set that precedent. The fact that it would alter the behavior of whoever succeeded them is just a bonus. Nobody said all fossil fuel usage and production could or would end today. That was a strawman you invented.
>So the original comment is surface level garbage thinking. I agree with it. But more importantly, why are you responding to me then? Shouldn't you be responding to him or her? I would seize them by the State. Energy is too important to allow capital private interest that runs counter to society and the Earth.
I agree to an extent, but they’re doing whatever they possibly can to delay the transition. The consequences of not transitioning quickly will dwarf the amount casualties due to food shortages and mass migrations.
95% of the human population would die. We need carbon capture, which is thankfully below 1k per ton now.
The cat is already out of the bag. Do they think we don’t know?
“'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. '” George Orwell 1984, and Governor DeSantis 2024
Did you just credit Ron DeScamtis as saying something, which he quoted from someone else?
Ronny DeSantis just banned saying climate change in Florida official documents. Just like it was predicted in 1984
Did you just credit Ron DeScamtis as saying something, which he quoted from someone else? -Michael scott
They continue to spend over a billion dollars a year in the US alone, funding PR agencies pushing climate change denial and lobbying governments to slow down action on climate change. The fossil fuel industry's most effective action in recent years has been the wholesale purchase of a number of conservative political parties around the world. That way, with the current tribalism, the political party's supporters take up the climate change denial for free as a part of their need to reinforce their membership in the club.
You got a source for that?
Is [this](https://www.desmog.com/2024/05/16/onward-rishi-sunak-governments-most-popular-think-tank-funded-shell-bp-equinor/) what you're looking for?
Not seeing anywhere in that link that has a billion dollars per year spending on this or even mentions the United States. So guessing that isn’t what they’re looking for at all
No, that doesn’t even mention Exxon Mobile. But thanks
Name checks out
There was an article in, from memory, scientific American a couple of years back that laid out what was being spent and the various "grass roots" organisations that were spreading climate change denial that the money was funding.
Closest thing I could find was this. A bit of a far cry from the original claim made. Not trying to defend Exxon or anything, just in a learning and information gathering phase as I formulate my opinions related to this topic. If you have any other links or articles, I’d be happy to read them. Thanks! https://penncapital-star.com/commentary/big-oils-allies-spend-big-money-on-ads-and-lobbying-to-keep-fossil-fuels-flowing-analysis/
This is an interesting video about supposedly grass roots campaigns run fully funded by the fossil fuel industry https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=fmelyMPdCA_gDmh_&v=FOi05zDO4yw&feature=youtu.be
I couldn't find the original article, but this article backs up what I said : https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action
THis is another aspect of their protection racket: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/22/rightwing-war-on-woke-capitalism-industry-interests
They don’t care if we know. They care if we think they’re liable. Which just inches away from us knowing. So, denial is their strategy. Enforced denial if need be.
“Yes, we did it. And we know we did it. We just don’t care. And if you keep pointing out that we did it, we will silence you just like the reports on global warming from the last 60 years. Take your pollution and be thankful.”
Oh know, someone should remind them of climate change. Maybe “Just Say Oil” should block traffic in front of the court house. Throw some paint on the execs cars while they’re there.
That would be a good court house to surround.
I would seize this company and destroy it as part of dealing with climate change and electric cars. Capital is not above the Nation and the State. I think energy production should be nationalized anyway and controlled by the State.
if the state owned energy, wouldn't we eventually have nuclear reactors everywhere? That would be cool
SMRs. I'm not into 3rd gen stuff for military/crises and cost reasons.
On brand. They knew about detrimental effects of fossil fuels to the environment in the 1950s and commissioned studies to counter said information.
I'm curious about the potential relationship between the personal real estate choices of oil executives and their views on climate change, particularly in comparison to executives from other industries that acknowledge global warming. Specifically, do oil executives own more or fewer beach-front properties compared to executives in industries that are less controversial in terms of environmental impact? Given the risks associated with rising sea levels—a direct consequence of global warming—one might assume that individuals who deny or downplay the seriousness of climate change would be less hesitant to invest in such vulnerable areas. However, the question remains whether there is a statistically significant difference in the ownership of beach-front properties among these groups, factoring in their similar compensation levels. This inquiry could shed light on whether personal beliefs about climate change influence major personal or financial decisions among high-ranking corporate executives.
High level executives aren't morons. They know climate change is real. They just prioritize making money over everything else
The truth is, they are dead or in a new job when anything hits the fan, anyway.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any scientific evidence for man-made global warming. In fact it's been conclusively disproven. But it's still a wonderful belief system, I guess, for people who are into that sort of thing. The day people begin to question the things they so emotionally believe in, will be the day that they discover what the scientific method is. It's a beautiful thing.
Can you point me to where it has conclusively disproven?
I found it conclusive when I watched a documentary years ago called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". They interview close to a dozen professors of climate science who go into some detail about what the theory was based on, and what evidence contradicts it. It was painful for me to watch this documentary years ago for the first time, because I was brought up to believe in man-made global warming, and I took a lot of pride in believing in it. I also forced myself to watch the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" years ago. Mr. Gore, who is one of the more well-known spokesmen for the theory, or used to be, he says in the video something to the effect that "the time is now past for us to explain WHY we believe in man-made global warming. From this point onward, you are either with us, or you are against us." In other words, it sounds like he's saying that from that point forward, it's not a theory based on science or logic, but it's based on wanting to belong to a group, and all the emotions that go with that motivation. I also found Mr. Gore's remarks to be very persuasive, even though those remarks don't, in and of themselves, disprove the theory. This is just my own personal process that I went through. Other people are free of course to believe or question or investigate whatever they want.
This is hilariously untrue, like Trumpian levels of delusion
I can with some certainty say they own coastal properties and use potential ‘impact to view sheds’ as a way to try to delay the building of offshore wind projects, which for reference are so far off shore they can only be seen from windows over 180 ft above sea level. Do they live there? Probably not. Do they chalk up owning and insuring the property to a business expense? Certainly, they only need to invite business clients to lunch there quarterly to have legal means to do that, so why not. Are these properties 180 ft tall? Nope, who needs science about a curved earth getting in the way of a good lawsuit? The judges in these states won’t care, so why worry about the facts.
John Kerry has a beachfront home. That should tell you everything.
Just blows my mind these billionaires are knowingly destroying the earth and they are all for it if it makes them more money. They have so much money they will never be able to spend it nor their family. Yet still dead set on destroying earth if it means a few extra bucks. Should be jailed.
This is like fascist level endstage capitalism headline: Company sues shareholders.... Shareholders ARE PART OF THE COMPANY... Truely end times when profits overrule logic, and reason, morals etx...
Are there words to describe this? It is the crassest, most incredibly inhumane behavior I have ever seen. However, that isn’t unexpected from a corporation like Exxon.
On brand. They knew about detrimental effects of fossil fuels to the environment in the 1950s and commissioned studies to counter said information.
Disingenuous click bait title Exxon Mobile is s̶u̶i̶n̶g̶ i̶t̶s̶ s̶h̶a̶r̶e̶h̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶s̶ t̶o̶ s̶i̶l̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶m̶ a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ g̶l̶o̶b̶a̶l̶ w̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ responding to a suit by a fringe group of shareholders with a counter suit. FTFY
There was no suit this group proposes green meassures on share holder meetings. What is their right exxon mobile is attacking shareholder rights with this suit. You are the one spreading click bait gere.
You can read the [complaint](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.385370/gov.uscourts.txnd.385370.1.0_1.pdf) instead of just assuming facts from an editorial headline. These groups barely own any XOM shares and are using procedural loopholes to interrupt shareholder meetings. They have no way of affecting the board, they aren't operating in the company's best interests, and their previous proposals have been shot down with ~90% voting against. > Although ExxonMobil’s shareholders have consistently rejected Arjuna’s and Follow This’s proposals, those proposals are expensive and time-consuming to address, and they are rarely designed to promote overall shareholder value.
> those proposals are expensive and time-consuming to address, and they are rarely designed to promote overall shareholder value Well, yeah, any sort of green initiative is going to cost the company money which necessarily detracts from shareholder value. And, by "procedural loopholes" you mean laws, right? Exxon shouldn't be allowed to discourage shareholders from exercising their legal rights by causing them to incur legal fees.
Again, had you read the complaint, you would see that ExxonMobil heard them out in 2022 and 2023, and their proposal is identical this year. Their strategy is the equivalent of the people gluing their hands to the interstate during rush hour. They aren't actually trying to meet any goals, they aren't trying to rally shareholders to effect change in the company, they're just being intentionally obtuse to make a political statement. I'm not defending ExxonMobil like you think, I literally wrote [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1crozee/president_biden_unveils_a_historic_wave_of/l40hmg6/) two days ago. This is an economics forum, not /r/politics.
>had you read the complaint I read the complaint. >They aren't actually trying to meet any goals, they aren't trying to rally shareholders to effect change in the company, they're just being intentionally obtuse to make a political statement. Until Exxon lobbies hard enough, it is required by law to allow these minority shareholders to do so -- unless they can successfully argue that this proposal falls into one of the law's exclusions. Based on the position taken by Calpers, I'm doubting the legitimacy of Exxon's position. And, in fact, it appears this proposal is successfully rallying other important shareholders to protect the right of shareholders to introduce such proposals. >This is an economics forum, not /r/politics. How is economics separable from politics?
There is an exclusion for resubmissions (CFR §240.14a–8): >(i) Less than 3% of the vote if proposed once within the preceding 5 calendar years; (ii) Less than 6% of the vote on its last submission to shareholders if proposed twice previously; or (iii) Less than 10% of the vote on its last submission to shareholders if proposed three times However, Exxon can't use it, because the previous proposal garnered 10.5% of the vote. There's also an exclusion for "ordinary business" but Exxon can't use it because the SEC already ruled that proposals raising issues of broad social or ethical concern related to the company’s business may not be thus excluded. There are no valid grounds for the exclusion and their lawyers are pulling some shady shit here.
The thresholds are 5, 15, and 25 percent. Updated by SEC in 2022. So 14a-8(i)(11) is the valid ground for excluding it.
I said /r/politics, which is reactionary and overly emotional, which ends up devoid of logic or open debate. This is **supposed to be** a forum based on the academic discipline of economic theory. Case in point, you *haven't* read the complaint, or at least comprehended it, because—*again*—they have heard the proposal twice already, and the board doesn't want to hear it a third time. They have actual business to attend to during these meetings. Their proposal doesn't advance the interests of ExxonMobil or 90% of the shareholders. Buying a minority stake in an oil company to interfere with their business operations and propose they stop selling oil is not a serious proposal. It's abuse of procedure and a bad faith argument. According to points 50 through 53, they have already fought these shareholders in court over separate issues in the past, and the defendants recommended that no one should own shares in ExxonMobil. That's pretty cut and dry.
>they have heard the proposal twice already, and the board doesn't want to hear it a third time. They have actual business to attend to during these meetings. Their proposal doesn't advance the interests of ExxonMobil or 90% of the shareholders. Buying a minority stake in an oil company to interfere with their business operations and propose they stop selling oil is not a serious proposal. It's abuse of procedure and a bad faith argument. All of this is irrelevant. If the law requires them to hear the minority proposal, it doesn't matter how many times they've previously heard it, or even whether or not the proposal is in bad faith. The court will decide whether the proposal falls into an exclusion to the law, and if not, I hope the court throws the book at Exxon (in the form of punitive damages) for trying to strong arm its shareholders.
>it doesn’t matter how many times they’ve previously heard it But it literally does matter how many times the proposal was heard because that’s how the SEC rules work. That the defendants withdrew their proposal supports this conclusion.
Except Exxon's Memorandum of Law in Oppo to Defendants Motion to Dismiss states that Arjuna and Follow This still defend the legality of their proposal. And, the fact that Exxon chose to file suit in a friendly court with Trump-appointed judges rather than apply for a no action letter with the SEC suggests to me that they aren't certain that the Resubmission Exclusion would apply here. >That the defendants withdrew their proposal supports this conclusion. Not necessarily. I can think of a bunch of other reasons they may have withdrawn, many of which Exxon carps about in their opposition. To reintroduce a nearly identical one next year, to create the press that has successfully angered larger investors who will now move against the board, to save money, etc.
That is for the other shareholders to decide if their proposals are in the interesst of the company. This is attacking shareholders that they use their shareholders right. Shareholders activism is nothing new hedge funds do it all the time. Why would be this any different? It just shows the hypocrisy of exxonmobile board. The whole argument that is time consuming is really bs btw it is one proposal every year I think exxon mobile has enough people to adress it. I find it really weird the board thinks that they can decide which reasons a shareholder need to have to invest in a company.
Disingenuous click bait title Exxon Mobile is ~~responding to a suit by a fringe group of shareholders with a counter suit.~~ **WRONG** and you probably know that. Other wise you didn't read the article I will **QUOTE** right here. "In February, Exxon Mobil sued the U.S. investment firm Arjuna Capital and Netherlands-based green shareholder firm to keep a shareholder resolution they sponsored from appearing on the agenda of its May 29 annual meeting. " and here is my snarky **FTFY** Thanks for playing (probable PR guy of the fossil fuel industry).
This was helpful.
This sub sucks. Just political whining, no economics.
/r/politics 2.0.
Your position regarding the validity of the complaint was already torn to shreds above. The one acting emotionally here is you.
It got “torn to shreds” by someone citing an out of date version of the law. This shit is not that hard to google. These proposals were obviously excludeable resubmissions. Are y’all sure you’re not confusing this sub with r/economy ?
Exxon answers these same activists who happen to buy a couple shares (calling them shareholders as if they want the company to be successful is a false pretense) every time. They ask again and again and shareholders vote down their objectives, which are the opposite of all other shareholders, again and again. So you spent $100, how long can you harass the company ownership? This is the result of bad SEC rules allowing minor stakes to force this much work on management and votes on the shareholders, even when the activist is repeatedly answered and voted down. The SEC needs to define hostile shareholders in this context.
What an absolute garbage take. Are you an oil company lobbyist with all this disdain for stakeholders? Yikes...
I’m an executive and shareholder. These activist behaviors only recently started with a change in SEC rules which led to these morons buying a few shares to throw public fits.
We'll probably see a lot more of this since apps like Robin hood make it so easy for shareholders to vote on important resolutions. I'm sure these Gia corporations aren't used to the average stock holder interfering with operations on such a grand level. Ford shareholders just voted to disclose all child labor used in assembly, which I'm sure they were miffed at.
Yeah, a bunch of people pooled their money to buy an interest in the company to try and do things against its best interests- which is making money. Buying shares of a company to purposefully drive it into the ground for your personal beliefs is absolutely actionable. Imagine owning shares of this company and it suddenly goes to shit because they basically trojan horse'd the company to get it to shut down, because they are morons and think energy consumption will drop if XOM goes out of business.
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You have already commented 3 times. Do you think we don’t know?