By Ross Kerber
(Reuters) – The top U.S. securities regulator revised guidance on Wednesday to give companies more leverage to skip shareholder resolutions submitted for annual meetings, undoing a change made in 2021 and seen as a blow to activists pressing companies on environmental, social or governance issues.
Such resolutions have become the centerpiece of many corporate meetings in recent years as investors took new interest in matters like climate change or workforce diversity. But the trend has prompted pushback from stock issuers and some Republican politicians who see them as distractions.
Critics include Mark Uyeda, named acting chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month by President Donald Trump.
The SEC said it will now take a company-specific approach rather than focus on broad social impact in deciding corporate requests to skip votes on shareholder resolutions, according to a legal bulletin on the agency’s website.
The new guidance also gives companies more room to claim that proposals micromanage their operations and skip votes.
Sanford Lewis, an attorney who represents shareholder activists, said the new wording “gives companies enormous latitude to claim that a proposal micromanages if the proposal asks the company for specifics.”
(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Mark Porter)
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