Corporate Governance

How Did We Vote This Proxy Season?

Our Proxy Season Wrap-Up: 2023 report highlights some summary proxy vote statistics and trends this proxy season.

Read the Proxy Season Wrap-Up Report (PDF)

Overview

Our Corporate Governance team is part of Global Equity, which is the largest asset class within the CalPERS investment portfolio. As an investor in public companies, we have certain rights that allow us to influence how our portfolio companies are managed and governed. We exercise these rights through proxy voting, corporate engagements, and shareowner campaigns.

We work to ensure that the public companies we invest in are managed to generate long-term, sustainable investment returns consistent with our Total Fund Investment Policy (PDF, 14.5 MB) and Investments Beliefs. Our corporate governance activities are an integral part of managing our Global Equity portfolio in the best interests of our members.

We do this through the following work:

  • Engagements with our public portfolio companies. We engage our portfolio companies to encourage them to consider how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities affect their ability to create value over the long-term.
  • Voting our proxies in accordance with our Governance & Sustainability Principles (PDF), Investment Beliefs, and Proxy Voting Guidelines (PDF) to ensure our portfolio companies are accountable for the generation of long-term, sustainable returns.
  • Collaboration with partners to educate and influence the market.