Active Ownership

→ the company’s action is verifiable (where relevant)

If the desired outcome of reactive engagement is not achieved, the engagement process will be evaluated and could be terminated if significant progress has not been made. Several points of action will be considered at such a point, amongst which is the renewal of the objectives for engagement, intensification of the engagement, targeted proxy voting, or the exclusion of the relevant company from DNB AM’s investment universe.

Proactive engagements are conducted with the aim of encouraging companies to mitigate sustainability risks before they materialize, or to take advantage of sustainability-linked opportunities that are not being sufficiently addressed at the present time. Proactive engagement may also be conducted as part of a fact-finding exercise and are important inputs to the investment decision-making process for the portfolio managers in DNB AM. The dialogues may revolve around a specific issue or to raise the company’s general level of awareness around sustainability issues, without the company being suspected of being in breach of the DNB Group Instruction for Responsible Investments.

For proactive engagements, the aim of our dialogue is continuous improvement, and the engagement periods may therefore be more flexible and long-term. To prioritize our proactive engagements, we assess:

- how large of a holding we have in the company

- if this is a company where we will have a large holding in the future

- if the company is a large holding in one of our actively managed funds