NLPC has submitted shareholder proposals at 11 different Fortune 500 companies that address diversity, equity and inclusion — policies that have suffered a rapid decline in popularity over the past year, now accelerating to full obsolescence following President Trump‘s inauguration.
One aspect of DEI still embedded in corporate culture (and compensation) are incentives that are included in formulas designed to boost top executives’ pay. Every company designs their programs differently, but each year most companies include metrics and/or goals — some explained very vaguely — that serve to boost the income of corporate decision-makers. None of the goals (which companies sometimes airily call “aspirations” to soften the accusation that they set race- and gender-based quotas, which they bristle at) are performance-based as far as boosting the companies’ bottom-lines.
Nearly all of NLPC’s DEI proposals for the 2025 annual meeting season request companies to remove those considerations from executive pay calculations. Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg today reported on our proposals — from the Journal:
Goldman [Sachs] and JPMorgan [Chase] received the anti-DEI proposals from [National Center for Public Policy Research] and NLPC, some of the people familiar with the matter said. Bank of America and Citigroup received proposals from NLPC and the Heritage Foundation, respectively, asking the banks to audit whether they have surveilled customers on the basis of their political or religious beliefs….
The NLPC’s proposals ask the banks’ boards to consider removing DEI initiatives as a factor that affects pay for executives such as Goldman CEO David Solomon and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon (pictured above).
From the Bloomberg article:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are pushing back on demands to roll back their diversity initiatives.
In television appearances Wednesday, the chief executive officers of the two New York-based firms said they’re going to continue to focus on programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their workforces and customer bases even as shareholder activists push them to change course.
“Bring them on,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland…
…groups including the National Legal and Policy Center and the National Center for Public Policy Research, which own shares in the firms, have filed shareholder proposals urging the banks to remove links between diversity initiatives and executive pay, and examine DEI initiatives for legal and reputational risks.
“Our proposal is really about incentivizing how executives are leading their companies,” said Paul Chesser, director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Corporate Integrity Project. “The incentives should be fair.” The NLPC wants both banks to strip DEI considerations from executive pay.
JPMorgan is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to ignore the proposal, arguing that it contains false claims about the bank.
NLPC’s proposals for the above-mentioned companies can be viewed at the following links:
