February 20, 2025
Voting recommendations: Use your influence
You have decided to invest in companies that operate sustainably. In doing so, you also want to take responsibility with your money and help shape the economy and society for the future. However, it is not only your assets that make a valuable contribution to this, you can also contribute to the sustainable transformation of companies with your vote. At general meetings, companies put important decisions to the shareholders for a vote. Forma Futura supports you with dedicated voting recommendations for the Swiss companies in your portfolio.
As a shareholder, you are much more than just a silent partner in a company. By exercising your voting rights, you can directly influence its sustainable development. In addition to direct dialogue with companies, exercising shareholder rights is the second way to act as an active shareholder. At general meetings, companies put important decisions to the vote of their shareholders. With your vote, you can contribute to the sustainable transformation of companies.
Forma Futura offers you support and provides you with sound decision-making criteria so that you can exercise your rights as a shareholder responsibly. You will receive voting recommendations for the general meetings of all Swiss companies in your portfolio. Since 2020, we have been working with Ethos, the Swiss Foundation for Sustainable Development. Ethos analyzes over 200 general meetings of Swiss companies based on its own principles of corporate governance and guidelines for exercising voting rights. Combined with our own analyses and guidelines, this information forms the basis for the recommendations we provide to our clients.
In 2025, we developed voting recommendations for 20 Swiss companies (previous year: 19 companies). In 2024, our rejection rates for agenda items relating to remuneration, sustainability reports, and board members were at their highest level in five years, at 40%, 58%, and 21%, respectively. The high rejection rate for sustainability reporting can be explained in part by the fact that some companies only allowed a consultative – i.e., non-binding – vote on the agenda item. This contradicts Art. 964 of the Swiss Code of Obligations, which came into force for the 2023 reporting period and was therefore applied for the first time at the 2024 general meetings. Forma Futura continues to reject any sustainability report that is not binding but merely put to a consultative vote.
This year, several companies changed the vote on the sustainability report from consultative to binding, which explains our higher acceptance rate for agenda items relating to the sustainability report compared to last year. Our rejection rates for agenda items relating to remuneration and members of the Board of Directors have also fallen compared to last year and are now back in line with the long-term average.
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