BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB COMPANY | Corporate financial sustainability at BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB COMPANY

Status
1.15% votes in favour
AGM date
Previous AGM date
Proposal number
4
Resolution details
Company ticker
BMY
Lead filer
National Center for Public Policy
Resolution ask
Report on or disclose
ESG theme
  • Social
  • Governance
ESG sub-theme
  • Diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI)
  • Lobbying / political engagement
Type of vote
Shareholder proposal
Filer type
Shareholder
Company sector
Health Care
Company HQ country
United States
Resolved clause
Shareholders request that the Board of Directors create a board committee on corporate financial sustainability to oversee and review the impact of the Company’s policy positions, advocacy, partnerships and charitable giving on social and political matters, and the effect of those actions on the Company’s financial sustainability. The Company should issue a public report on the committee’s findings by the end of 2025.
Whereas clause
The Company’s policy positions, advocacy, partnerships and charitable giving on significant social policy and political matters should not alienate consumers, decrease sales, or diminish shareholder value.
The Company also has a 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) “Corporate Equality Index.”1 Earning that score arguably requires spending shareholder assets to embrace highly partisan positions on hot-button issues, such as supporting legislation that eliminates religious liberties and discriminates against girls and women while opposing legislation to protect children from adult materials. In his 2021 book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, Stephen Soukup describes HRC as “influencing businesses by employing a ‘soothsayer’s trick’” that boils down to increasing the radicalization of businesses by way of a strategy to “simply keep moving the goalposts.”2
The Company has been rated “high risk” by the 1792 Exchange on its “Spotlight Bias Report,”3 which is published to “shed light on corporate activism”4 and lists the following as potential concerns for BMS: (1) BMS “claims to protect its employees from viewpoint discrimination but fired multiple employees who refused to get Covid-19 vaccinations due to religious reasons.”5 (2) “BMS has pledged to vet vendors based on LGBTQ policies,”6 which may result in discriminating against religious vendors.
The Company has taken public and politically divisive positions over issues of significant social policy concern, including apparently supporting “the ill-named Equality Act” even though “scholars and legal experts [argue] that the law would eviscerate female sports and cancel federal religious freedom protections.”7
The Company is also listed as a Champion Tier Brand Partner by the Trevor Project,8 an organization that supports “gender affirming care,”9 which critics have argued translates into advocating for dangerous puberty blockers and genital mutilation for children.10 Trevor Project has also been accused of facilitating the hiding of gender confusion problems from parents.1
Supporting statement
Recent events have made clear that company bottom-lines, and therefore value to shareholders, drop when companies take overtly political and divisive positions that alienate consumers. Following Bud Light’s embrace of partisanship and disparagement of its customer base, its revenue fell $395 million in North America when compared to the same time a year ago.12 This amounts to roughly 10 percent of its revenue in the months following its leap into contentious politics.13 Target Corporation’s market cap fell over $15 billion amid backlash for similar actions.14 And Disney stock fell 44 percent in 2022 – its worst performance in nearly 50 years – amid its decision to put extreme partisan agendas ahead of parents’ rights.

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