(Originally published by Promarket on July 16, 2024)

This past January, faced with a shareholder proposal encouraging the company to accelerate its greenhouse-gas emission reduction efforts, Exxon’s management took an unprecedented step: suing its own shareholders for “abuse” of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s shareholder-proposal process. After months of litigation, one of the investors who brought the proposal, Arjuna Capital, agreed not only to withdraw the proposal but to pledge never to bring such a proposal again, finally persuading a federal judge in mid-June to dismiss the case as moot. Exxon’s tactics should worry anyone who values productive dialogue between a publicly traded company and its investors.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on Promarket‘s page page here.)