Engagement Analysis Analysis
Stewardship Framework and Processes: UBS appears to be engaging with companies on climate change. It has a climate engagement framework to assess issuers’ transition plans in 7 sectors across 75 companies. It also has a structure informing engagement activities, outlining the 6 stages of its climate engagement lifecycle, along with a framework to assess companies’ alignment with net zero pathways and the net zero convergence of their transition plans. UBS has a strong engagement escalation strategy and has provided examples of escalation activities like voting against a company director on climate grounds.
Climate Stewardship Actions: The asset manager is engaging companies to transition in line with 1.5C, and is driving significant change in company behavior. For example, it engaged with PEMEX to produce a transition plan, and its engagements withMaersk led to the company validating its climate targets through SBTi. It is unclear whether UBS is actively engaging with companies on climate policy advocacy, but states that it assesses companies’ lobbying and policy advocacy. It is involved in several investor initiatives, and was involved in CA100+ collaborative engagements in 1206881 and 1910239, but does not appear to have collaborated with any climate-related investor groups in the most recent year.
Governance and Transparency: UBS has described its stewardship governance structure and processes, including the Stewardship Committee, which oversees policies and ensures effectiveness of its overall stewardship approach. Its approach also considers clients’ views through regular client feedback and consultation. The asset manager is transparent about engagements, regularly disclosing engagement subjects, context, actions, and outcomes. It has disclosed all its proxy voting data and justifications, and is transparent about how voting decisions are made.
Shareholder Authority and Voting: UBS has provided some examples of using shareholder authority on climate, such as voting against directors on climate grounds and co-filing shareholder resolutions. In 2024, it voted against the reappointment of an executive director and Reliance Industries, and in 2023, it voted against directors at 8 companies and co-filed a resolution on deforestation.
Insightia data suggests that UBS is broadly supportive of AGM resolutions InfluenceMap categorizes as in line with the Paris Agreement, supporting 67.3% in 2019, 71.2% in 2020, 70.8% in 2021, and 75.8% in 2022.