ClearBridge Investments 2024 Stewardship Report

Welcome Letter - Terrence Murphy, CEO

Our 2024 Stewardship Report examines how we are applying the unique risks and opportunities of critical sustainability issues into our sustainability considerations and policies as well as advances in our engagement practices to better quantify and achieve impact. Read more

Firm Overview

We believe actively managed, high-conviction portfolios that emphasise differentiated, bottom-up stock selection provide clients the best opportunities to earn superior investment results over the long term. Read more

Annual Update - Mary Jane McQuillen, Head of ESG, Portfolio Manager

Since 1996 Mary Jane McQuillen has helped steer ClearBridge Investments’ pioneering approach to sustainable investing and has been central to ClearBridge Investments achieving milestones such as co-publishing the first “ESG” report with the UNEP FI’s Asset Management Working Group, which further coined “ESG” for institutional investment in 2004. Read more

The ClearBridge Investments Model of ESG Integration

Underlying ESG investing as ClearBridge Investments practices it are the many ways a company’s performance on material ESG issues can affect value creation. Read more

ClearBridge Investments ESG Materiality Framework

Our proprietary ClearBridge ESG Materiality Framework™ focuses on the ESG issues that truly matter for each company, leveraging our analysts’ experience and complementing their research. Read more

Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative: 2023 Update

Measuring the alignment of our in-scope assets as of 31 December 2023, we find 55% to be “Net Zero Aligned.” This represents a 51% increase from our baseline and 27% over our target pathway. Read more

Engage for Impact: A ClearBridge Investments Internal Initiative

The Engage for Impact (EFI) initiative encourages targeted engagements that we believe have a strong likelihood of creating positive impact, which we define as the creation of long-term positive environmental or social outcomes for the benefit of all stakeholders in public companies: their investors — our clients — and their employees, customers, suppliers and communities. Read more

2023 Engagement Highlights

ClearBridge Investments pursues a partnership approach to active ownership, seeking to act as responsible stewards of our clients’ capital. Engagements are thus a key stewardship tool, consisting of ongoing conversations with leaders at portfolio companies about factors that could materially affect value creation. Read more

Biodiversity: Biodiversity is essential for human and animal well-being and for the functioning of the planet. Most basically, it allows for nature to provide a wide range of goods and services, such as food, water, medicine and recreation, that are essential for human societies. Read more

Climate Change and Decarbonisation:  ClearBridge Investments assesses the specific climate-related risks and opportunities faced by individual companies as part of our bottom-up stock selection process. These factors then drive our climate-related engagements with companies. Read more

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Companies that treat employees well can have higher employee engagement and lower employee turnover, which can increase productivity, reduce human resources costs and increase customer loyalty. Read more

Human Rights: As stated in ClearBridge Investments’ ESG Policy, we view human rights as universal and relevant to businesses in all areas of the private sector. Accordingly, human rights, as a focus area, is a key tenet of our ESG integration approach. Read more

Updates to the ClearBridge Proxy Voting Guidelines

The ClearBridge Proxy Committee made several updates to the ClearBridge Proxy Voting Guidelines to allow us to follow fiduciary principles in an evolving corporate landscape. Read more

ClearBridge Investments Proxy Voting 2023 Overview

ClearBridge Investments' commitment to this practice is evidenced by our 100% proxy voting record; we have voted on every eligible shareholder proposal at companies in our client portfolios. In 2023, ClearBridge Investments voted on 15,060 proposals. Read more

Proxy Voting Highlights

As a top shareholder of many companies, we use our voting power and ongoing engagements to suggest improvements for companies we own and provide feedback to express our opinion of proposals we deem inadequate. Read more

How Public Equity Ownership Contributes to the SDGs

ClearBridge Investments believes public companies can create impact, both positive and negative, due to their global reach, their deep supply chains and their interaction with the communities in which they operate. In turn, because of their size and influence, this impact, when positive, can drive progress toward the SDGs. Read more

ClearBridge and WaterAid

Since 2013 ClearBridge has partnered with WaterAid to help address water challenges around the world. Read more