Shareholder Advocacy

With the purchase of a minimum number of shares, any individual or group can become part owner of a corporation, albeit a small part. With shareholder status comes the opportunity to dialogue with the management of a corporation, and the right to vote on and introduce shareholder resolutions that can help shape corporate policy. Shareholders also routinely receive detailed reports about company performance.

The shareholder activist movement has been led by socially responsible investor groups, such as the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). These groups have raised important environmental, human rights, worker and social issues with large corporations. Most notably, shareholder advocacy is credited with playing a part in the downfall of the South African apartheid regime through pressures for corporations to disinvest and disengage from South Africa.

In 2005, CRC joined with Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina (CRANC) to support their shareholder resolution urging Wells Fargo to stop financing payday lenders. This effort included a pre-vote street protest where participants “walked the money trail” from a Mission neighbourhood Wells Fargo branch to a nearby Money Mart check casher. Money Mart’s parent company had a $55 million line of credit from Wells Fargo.

This year, CRC looks forward to again working with CRANC to support a shareholder resolution urging H&R Block to rethink its brokering of 500% APR tax refund loans.

CRC now owns shares in a number of banking and financial corporations and looks forward to introducing its own resolutions. We would like to stop companies from peddling predatory financial products to low-income consumers and consumers of color. CRC continues to build relationships with socially responsible investor groups and funds as an added strategy for fighting predatory practices.