Last Thursday, resolutions we lodged at big bank ANZ with our campaign partner Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) received a world-record vote: 22.7% in favour of action on deforestation, representing $13.5 billion of shares voted in support of our resolution. 

This vote is well beyond the average global that nature-related shareholder resolutions receive (around 11%), and broke the previous global record of 18% support for a deforestation-related resolution at PepsiCo.

And it exceeded the already high vote at NAB Annual General Meeting (AGM), where our resolution co-filed with ACF, Australian Ethical and Melior Investment Management received a solid 13.9% vote of support from investors calling on the bank to disclose its links to deforestation.‍

A big thanks to the 100+ committed NAB and ANZ shareholders like who supported the resolutions and helped to get SIX and ACF into the room. ‍

These resolutions have already boosted vital conversations and action with the banks about the ties between their lending and deforestation. We’ve seen big investors here and overseas raise these issues with the banks, with some (like New York City Pension Fund, Norwegian pension fund KLP and the fund for Californian public sector workers Calpers) publicly supporting the resolutions.

We’ve seen NAB make a shift to start proactively monitoring for potential illegal clearing on sites that they finance - while ANZ has said they are going to start improving their monitoring of deforestation next year. 

And our resolution put the spotlight on the board to publicly speak to their record on protecting nature, with our questioning pushing the banks’ Chairs to vocalise reflections such as: 

• “This will be an area of ongoing progress, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed”. Phillip Chronican, NAB Chair
• “It is our intention to minimise our impact on nature.” Paul O’Sullivan, ANZ Chair. 

In 2026, SIX and ACF will be turning up the pressure on the big banks to act for nature. So - after a rest - we’ll see you in the new year. 

If you haven’t yet followed our partners ACF, you can learn more about them on their website, instagram or LinkedIn.

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Header photo L-R: Phoebe (SIX), Max Hamra (ACF Corporate Campaigns team), James (SIX) and Jolene George (ACF Corporate Campaigns team) at the NAB Annual General Meeting in Melbourne.