At the start of the AGM season we wrote that every vote counts, but Barclays PLC, Rio Tinto PLC, Standard Chartered PLC and Ocado Group PLC over the past 24 hours said they will carry on regardless, despite significant opposition votes on their climate and pay plans.
After over 19% of shareholder votes went against its climate plan, Barclays bosses said they will continue investment in oil and gas.
Climate campaigners and activist investor groups posed several questions to the boards of Barclays and fellow lender Standard Charterted, with impassioned protests carried out at both AGM events, including one protester glueing herself to a chair.
Already one of Europe's leading funders of oil and gas expansion, Barclays justified its decision to continue lending to hydrocarbon developers as the war in Ukraine was putting pressure on energy supply in the continent.
“We believe the financial services industry therefore needs to take a considered and pragmatic approach to near-term energy requirements. Barclays will participate fully in this discussion, alongside governments, businesses and other stakeholders," the bank said in a statement.
Barclays said it was “impractical” to cutting financing for oil and gas projects, arguing this would have little impact as companies finance exploration from their own cash flows.
“We believe continuing to support those companies that are transitioning is the right approach."
Mia Watanabe, UK campaigner for investment activist group Market Forces, who was present at the Barclays AGM, said: "Barclays’ refusal to listen to climate protestors and instead drown them out with loud videos is a perfect metaphor for the bank’s attitude towards climate change.
"Barclays claims it’s committed to limiting global warming to a critical 1.5C but ignores the fact that the International Energy Agency states that there can be no new coal, oil, or gas in order to meet this target. Barclays can either align themselves with the science or continue to be the biggest fossil fuel funders in Europe. It can’t do both."
Similarly, StanChart saw over 31% of votes against the directors' remuneration policy, 17% of votes against its 'net zero by 2050 pathway', with 12% in support of a shareholder-directed resolution to "implement a revised net-zero strategy and mandate annually reporting under that strategy".
The Asia-focused bank said it "will continue to engage with shareholders on these important issues in the forthcoming months and will publish an update on that engagement within six months of the AGM".
Meanwhile, even though 15.7% of Rio Tinto PLC shareholders voted against its climate plan, the mining giant said it would plough ahead.
Rio chair Simon Thompson repeated the company's long-held position that it cannot set scope-3 targets because it can’t control the emissions of its customers, saying “it doesn’t seem appropriate to me to be setting targets unless you have influence and the ability to deliver against those targets”.
But Thompson said the FTSE 100-listed group is working with customers to help design the technology, and supply the products, that will enable decarbonisation.
"If Rio believes it has no influence, why is the company bothering with this work at all? And if it believes this work can deliver decarbonisation results, then why can’t the company anchor the ambition and intent of that work with customers to quantifiable targets?" questioned Market Forces.
Elsewhere, the Ocado remuneration committee said it will continue with its director pay plan, which it calls the Value Creation Plan (VCP), but keep it and other aspects of executive remuneration "under review" and "continue to engage with shareholders to understand their perspectives and concerns".