£3.8trn Investor Group Presses FTSE 100 on Climate Votes

An investor coalition pressing FTSE 100 companies for a shareholder vote on their climate transition plans has grown to £3.8 trillion in combined assets, a 22 percent increase from last year, even as the number of FTSE 100 companies holding such votes has fallen from a high of 15 in 2022 to just four this year. The initiative, now in its sixth year and led by asset manager CCLA and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, added new signatories including Dutch asset manager and pension administrator MN and Denmark's largest commercial pension provider, PFA. In 2025, participating investors wrote to 95 FTSE 100 companies asking for a transition plan vote at least once every three years, receiving 71 responses, with only eight companies committing to hold one and five of those specifying a triennial cycle.

 

Investor Assets Are Growing Faster Than Corporate Participation

 

The coalition's growth to £3.8 trillion reflects rising urgency among asset managers and asset owners rather than growing corporate appetite to comply. The number of FTSE 100 companies holding a climate transition plan vote peaked at 15 in 2022 before falling to five in 2023, six in 2024, five last year and four this year, a decline running in the opposite direction from the investor base pushing for the practice. Twenty of the current FTSE 100 constituents have held at least one such vote since 2021, meaning roughly four in five companies in the index have never put a transition plan to a shareholder vote despite six years of sustained investor pressure.

Doug McMurdo, chair of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, an association of UK pension funds with about £425 billion in assets, said the past year has demonstrated the mounting financial cost of climate change to the UK economy, citing impacts on agricultural production and billions of pounds in losses tied to extreme heat that are affecting companies, investors and communities directly. He said many companies treat publishing a transition plan as a compliance chore rather than a governance priority precisely because they are not legally required to do it, calling that approach disappointing given the stakes involved.

 

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Sector Participation Diverges Sharply, With Financials in Retreat

 

The data shows participation concentrated overwhelmingly in one sector while several others show none at all. More than 80 percent of FTSE 100 utilities companies have held at least one climate transition plan vote since 2021, making it by far the most consistent sector. No company in the consumer discretionary, healthcare, industrials, technology or telecommunications sectors has held a single such vote in that period. The financials sector has seen what CCLA and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum describe as a notable decline: nine different financial institutions held a vote across 2021 and 2022, but since 2023 only Legal & General Group and Aviva have done so, and among banks specifically, five held a vote in the programme's first two years and none has done so since. Aviva and SSE have been the most consistent individual filers, with Aviva filing every year since 2021 and SSE filing annually until last year, when it moved to a three-year cycle.

McMurdo pointed to BP's abandonment of its climate targets, followed by the exit of its chief executive and two chairpersons, as a symptom of the governance risk that comes from treating transition plans as optional rather than embedded practice. He said publishing a transition plan is increasingly viewed by asset owners as a marker of good corporate governance rather than an environmental add-on.

 

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Incoming FCA Rules Could Reshape Corporate Willingness

 

Tessa Younger, Better Environment lead at CCLA, said incoming Financial Conduct Authority rules requiring listed companies to disclose whether a transition plan exists, set to apply from January, could change how willing companies are to put those plans to a shareholder vote. She said the new transparency requirement introduces a different kind of pressure on companies than investor requests alone, since a company reluctant to publish details of its climate goals will now face a counterbalancing regulatory disclosure obligation regardless of whether it agrees to a vote. Whether that regulatory shift reverses the four-year decline in FTSE 100 transition plan votes, or simply adds a disclosure requirement layered on top of continued board-level reluctance, will become clearer once the rules take effect and companies report through their next annual cycle.