Shareholder and fiduciary engagement
Leveraging your investment portfolio’s impact potential
Shareholder and fiduciary engagement is a powerful impact lever for creating positive changes in business practices. Today’s major challenges, such as the climate crisis, ecosystem degradation and social inequality, have considerable impacts on individuals, society at large and businesses.
Institutional investors are not immune to these systemic concerns, which create risks for the companies held in their portfolio while also offering opportunities to be seized in a changing economy.
Why integrate shareholder and fiduciary engagement into your approach?
To act collectively
Extend the reach of your voice through an engagement model based on pooled dialogues.
To act concretely
Show your beneficiaries how their assets react to priority and concrete environmental and social issues.
To act in line with your fiduciary responsibility
Expand the lens through which you assess performance, by integrating important extrafinancial factors.
To act while maintaining your decision-making autonomy
Engagement adapts to all portfolio-construction strategies and is based on your investment choices.
At Æquo, we firmly believe that successful engagements are driven by thorough analysis and framed by a holistic approach, a clear process and regular progress tracking. Our approach is grounded in collaboration, informed and constructive dialogues and a robust methodology.
Our engagement activities are built around a rigorous research process at the heart of our operations. This process uses both primary and secondary data to objectively analyze companies’ issues and practices.
Our objective is to offer tailored recommendations based on this thorough analysis.
We offer five pooled engagement strategies covering more than 120 companies listed on world markets:
- Canadian large-caps
- American large-caps
- International large-caps
- Global small-caps
- Emerging markets
Transition to a low-carbon economy
Ecosystem and biodiversity preservation
Building a just, equitable and inclusive economy
Robust sustainability-oriented governance practices
Æquo stands out for its ability to deliver clear and detailed reports on dialogue progress, collaborative engagements and various topics and issues. Our documents are forwarded in a timely manner and are available in French and English, allowing you to properly respond to your stakeholder questions and requests.
For the portion of your portfolio invested in shares, the exercise of voting rights is an essential component of your shareholder engagement strategy.
To that end, Æquo is proud to offer its clients an important solution integrating this critical dimension. In partnership with the Groupe investissement responsable (GIR), we coordinate the entire process associated with the exercise of your voting rights, thereby ensuring an approach that is consistent with your dialogue activities and aligned with your global sustainable investment approach.
This collaboration ensures our clients benefit from leading expertise while centralizing the two pillars of their engagement strategy. In other words: an excellent way to simplify accountability reporting, enhance dialogue effectiveness and optimize the global impact of your efforts.
Why choose Æquo?
EXPERIENCE AND STABILITY
50 years of combined experience in shareholder engagement
POOLED APPROACH
Pooling of resources and assets: collective economic weight of over $140 billion achieved for our partners
PROXIMITY TO CLIENTS
Access to our experts and client service on a human scale
BILINGUAL SERVICE
Communications and reports available in English and French
ACCESSIBILITY
Tailored pricing to suit assets of any size