Exxon shareholder activists appeal to mutual funds

HOUSTON — A group of Exxon Mobil shareholders is appealing to investors in the nation’s biggest mutual funds to help change the oil giant’s approach to environmental issues and corporate governance.

Longtime activists Robert A.G. Monks and Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, among others, have created a Web site, www.exxonmutualfundshares.org, that allows investors to urge their mutual funds to support shareholder resolutions on climate change, renewable energy and an independent chairman. The site was unveiled Tuesday.

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, is scheduled to hold its annual meeting in Dallas on May 27.

Shareholder proposals asking Exxon Mobil for such things as specific greenhouse gas reduction goals and larger investments in renewable energy have become commonplace at Exxon’s annual gatherings. Last year, none of the 17 shareholder proposals received enough support to pass. All were opposed by the Exxon Mobil board.

The new Web site asks investors in 25 mutual-fund families to seek support of four issues, including the separation of the CEO and chairman positions. Rex Tillerson now holds both.

The site allows investors to click on a fund company and send a message that says, in part, “As a mutual fund shareholder, I am concerned about both the future of the environment and the future of my retirement nest egg.”

“We intend to watch how these mutual funds respond to this feedback from their customers and then let mutual-fund investors know whether their input was heeded or ignored,” Monks and Rockefeller Goodwin said in a statement.

Activist groups often petition funds to vote certain ways, but “it’s unusual for activists to try to work through the fund’s shareholders,” said Mike McNamee, spokesman for the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry’s biggest trade group.

A report released by the trade organization last summer showed that mutual funds in 2007 supported shareholder proposals on “board structure/election process” nearly half the time, but they voted for “social/environmental” proposals only 15.3 percent of the time.

Exxon Mobil said Tuesday it had no comment. A response to all shareholder proposals can be found in its proxy, filed April 13 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said.

A highly public attempt to divide the chairman and chief executive positions last year got support of 39.5 percent of shareholders, slightly less than the year before. It was led by descendants of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Exxon Mobil predecessor Standard Oil Corp.

Still, the proposal received the backing of some institutional investors in the U.S. and abroad.

It will be the eighth time that shareholders will vote on splitting the leadership positions. The one difference this year is the resolution is a binding change rather than a nonbinding proposal.

In the statement, Monks said separating the two positions would allow the CEO to focus on “delivering positive results to shareholders while empowering the chairman and the board to objectively analyze the long-term challenges and opportunities facing the company.”

Exxon said its board maintains the authority to separate the roles if warranted. For now, however, “the board believes that the most effective leadership structure … is for Mr. Tillerson to serve as both chairman and CEO,” the company says in its proxy.

Exxon Mobil shares rose $1.55 cents to $70.82 in trading Tuesday. They’ve traded between $56.51 and $96.12 in the past year.