Stewardship

We recognize that change drives investment performance, whether positively or negatively. Our role as active managers is to be on the lookout for positive change and to nurture it through active ownership.

Stewardship also means active ownership through engagement with portfolio companies’ management, to ensure proper governance that contributes to a better world while enhancing investment results.

We believe environmental, social, and governance factors can materially affect the performance of companies in which we invest, and our investment teams seek to engage with investee companies on governance issues we view as materially relevant. Given that the characteristics of different asset classes place us in varying positions within the capital stack, each asset class team engages on governance on behalf of its own clients, and the mechanisms for such engagement vary. For example, proxy voting and shareholder meetings are notable opportunities to express equity views, whereas in the credit realm, we believe engagement is most effective at the time of issuance.

As part of our research processes within each asset class, our investment teams aim to frequently spend time with senior-level management of the companies we’re analyzing, often discussing how various environmental, social, and governance factor could affect their businesses and potential investment performance. We believe such discussions can help draw management teams’ attention to potential risks and opportunities within their company, which can materially benefit our clients.

PineBridge has established proxy voting policies and procedures and engages a proxy agent to support us in executing proxy voting in accordance with our guidelines. Our objectives are to ensure that proxies are voted in the best interest of our clients, that our voting procedures are clearly outlined, and that clients may obtain information on how PineBridge has voted their proxies. We decide how to cast proxy votes on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration our policies and procedures, obligations under management agreements and fund offering documents, and other relevant considerations.

We perform an annual review of our proxy voting guidelines to ensure that we are continuing to serve the best interests of our clients. These assessments are ongoing and evolve in step with changes in the solutions available, the regulatory framework, and consumer and business behavior, and the companies’ business strategies and solutions will also evolve over time.