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Divest or Die
I used to write two hard news story a day for a county newspaper. Every story said Things just got worse for you and the world and there is nothing you can do about it. Details below.
It’s still true, but now and again there is a piece of news about which some of us can do something.
In this case, if you are someone with a stock portfolio, you can dump your shares of Exxon (XOM). If you have one or more of the Vanguard Group funds, they own 7.74% of Exxon as of March 2024; BlackRock Inc. owns 6.92%, and State Street Corp owns 5.34% of total Exxon shares outstanding, per Yahoo Finance.
And if you are CalPERS, which owns 0.2% of Exxon, you are on record as voting against the entire Exxon board of directors in a Quixotic shareholder uprising, which can not succeed unless asset managers like BlackRock and other pension funds join them. Exxon is facing a shareholder uprising because the company is continuing with a lawsuit against two activist investors.
The activists submitted a shareholder proposal around environmental disclosures and targets that Exxon sued to block. The two activist shareholder groups, Arjuna Capital and Follow This, have withdrawn the proposal, but Exxon refuses to drop the suit.
CalPERS, a $484 billion pension fund manager, said in an open letter Monday it would vote in opposition to all of Exxon’s…
