By Jonathan Stempel
OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) – Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected six proposals addressing environmental and social coverage points at Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, all of which the billionaire investor and his board opposed.
By margins of greater than 4-to-1, shareholders at Berkshire’s annual assembly voted in opposition to two proposals that the corporate’s insurance coverage and vitality operations disclose extra about their efforts to deal with local weather change together with greenhouse fuel emissions.
In addition they turned down a proposal for extra disclosure about efforts to advertise range, fairness and inclusion within the office.
By overwhelming majorities, shareholders voted in opposition to a separate environment-related proposal, making a board-level committee to watch security on the BNSF railroad unit, and requiring Berkshire to report yearly on how a lot its enterprise operations rely upon the “hostile” Chinese language authorities.
Berkshire invested in Chinese language electrical automobile firm BYD in 2008, although it started lowering that stake in 2022.
The votes weren’t shocking as a result of Buffett owns particular shares that give him a 31% voting stake in Berkshire. That makes it tough to undertake proposals Buffett opposes.
Berkshire shareholders additionally reelected the corporate’s 14-person board.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in Omaha, Nebraska; Modifying by Cynthia Osterman)
