5-26-07 by Court
A group of powerful Exxon investors are leading a campaign to stop the reappointment of Public Issue Committee Chair Michael Boskin to the Exxon Board of Directors. Their complaint is that Boskin has consistently refused to meet with them on the issue of global warming despite the fact that he is the point person for the board on the issue.
The Associated Press has the story. Boskin is a Stanford economics professor too, so the Stanford-Exxon intrigue grows even deeper. Here’s some of the scoop from AP.
Their announcement came the same day Exxon Mobil released its 2006 Corporate Citizenship Report, which noted, among other things, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 5.4 percent last year from 2005 because of increased oil production in Africa and liquefied natural gas output in the Middle East. Still, the company — the world’s largest publicly traded oil entity — said it was on target to improve energy efficiency by 10 percent at its global refining operations by 2012.
Specifically, the investor groups plan to call for the removal of director Michael Boskin, who’s up for re-election. They’re upset because they say Boskin, who chairs Exxon Mobil’s public issues committee, has refused to meet personally with them to discuss strategy for dealing with climate change. Boskin, a Stanford University economics professor who also runs a consulting firm, has served on the board of the Irving-based company since 1996.
"While its competitors are moving aggressively on climate change, this company … continues to hide its head in the sand rather than acknowledge the business implications of climate change," Connecticut State Treasurer Denise Nappier said in a conference call with reporters.Others opposing Boskin’s reappointment include the California State Teacher’s Retirement System; shareholder advocate Robert A.G. Monks; and the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, an alliance of Roman Catholic institutional investors primarily in New York.
What’s really interesting to me is the potential for investor groups to leverage change from big oil companies. The real question is whether institutional investors will be able to wield more power by withdrawing their investments from oil companies like Exxon altogether or by continuing to invest in them and seek change from within. Perhaps the latter is a strategy to build toward the former.
It’s a sure bet that a company like Exxon that makes $4.5 million per hour from the petroleum economy isn’t going to significantly contribute to breaking our dependence on petroleum. Wouldn’t an investor revolt that takes union, public and socially responsible investments out of Big Oil altogether be a better bargaining chip?