Among the shareholder proposals that NLPC submitted to companies for their 2026 spring annual meetings included a number that addressed diversity, equity and inclusion concerns.
As has been widely reported, over the past 18-24 months the backlash in the United States against DEI policies has been fierce. Consequently, a large percentage of corporations have either eliminated — or at least buried deeply and downplayed — their DEI practices as they applied to things like hiring, promotions, compensation, and representation statistics. For NLPC’s part, last year most of our DEI-focused proposals sought the elimination of financial incentives grounded in such metrics from executive pay (here is one example we presented at Coca-Cola).
Despite some resistance in the corporate world, as we planned for our 2026 proposals, we were pleased to see that most companies where NLPC is invested have dropped DEI incentives from executive pay. However, in reviewing the standards for consideration of candidates for their boards of directors, DEI requirements remained for several companies. Thus we submitted shareholder proposals at a few companies that called for the removal of DEI criteria when considering board nominees — here, for example, is the proposal we have pending at Colgate-Palmolive.
After we submitted similar proposals at American Express and Deere and Company for the upcoming season, we negotiated with the respective companies about changes we’d like to see made. Amex agreed to eliminate language that had stated the board wanted to achieve a “mix of directors” that included diversity aspects related to “gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and nationality.” In exchange for removing those specific identity criteria, NLPC withdrew its proposal.
With Deere, after we submitted our proposal in mid-August, the company removed the problematic DEI requirements (“race, ethnicity, gender, and other types of diversity”) in its corporate governance language addressing board composition. However, the company still had the old governance standards on its website, along with the new, which could cause confusion for investors. We informed Deere that if the outdated language was removed, we would withdraw our proposal, which we did.
We at NLPC commend American Express and Deere and Company for taking these common-sense steps to eliminate discriminatory language from their board of director policies, and thank their representatives for negotiating in good faith.
(Image above created via Grok AI).
