Shareholders Unite! Opportunities Ahead in 2025 to Increase Corporate Lobbying Transparency and Accountability

Corporate lobbyists will be front and center in the incoming Trump Administration, making the work of shining a light on political lobbying more important than ever.

It may come as no surprise to people reading this that Trump broke his own campaign trail promise to “stop listening to lobbyists.” Trump did so with lightning speed: his first official act as president-elect was appointing Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff.

News reports about Wiles primarily focused on her election roles as a veteran of Florida politics and in Trump’s presidential campaigns, but largely overlooked her extensive work as a federal lobbyist over the last seven years.

A Public Citizen report released last week called “Meet Susie Wiles’ Controversial Corporate Lobbying Clients” revealed that Wiles raked in mountains of money as a lobbyist for a tobacco company, foreign mining interests, and dozens of other corporate clients seeking federal approvals, permits, and contracts. By putting a corporate lobbyist in charge of his administration with his first act, Trump effectively hung a bright red ‘For Sale’ sign on the front door of his White House.

This brighter spotlight on the impact of corporate influence inside and on the Trump White House will be a hot topic as public company shareholders prepare to gather early next year for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) season.

But before they get underway, it’s the perfect moment to reflect on just how strong shareholder support was this past year for new transparency measures. Shareholder proposals pushing for companies to disclose the breadth and depth of their corporate lobbying expenditures and to provide investors with critical information about how that activity could affect investments gained steam at shareholder meetings in the spring of 2024.

Shareholders at a dozen major companies in a wide array of industries – from banking and transportation to telecommunications and e-commerce – voted to back lobbying disclosure shareholder proposals in significant numbers, despite strong opposition from boards of directors.

According to the business think tank The Conference Board, a shareholder proposal that goes to a vote and receives at least 30 percent support in an AGM election makes it an “issue meriting board attention.”

In the 2024 AGM season, shareholder lobbying disclosure proposals at 12 major companies met or exceeded this threshold — despite the corporate boards of directors vigorously opposing every single one of them.

More than a third of shareholders at Wells Fargo Bank (36.1 percent), Bank of New York Mellon (38.4 percent), Goldman Sachs (39.4 percent), and Truist (41.2 percent) voted for proposals to require those big banks to provide an annual report to shareholders disclosing policies and procedures governing lobbying, payments used for direct or indirect lobbying, membership in and payments to tax-exempt organizations that write and endorse model legislation, and the board and management’s decision-making process for making those lobbying payments.

These strong votes by shareholders show investors realize how risky it is for banks to hide some of their lobbying spending while pretending to be entirely transparent.  Sudden bank failures and PR crises have revealed the reputational risks when banks say one thing publicly but lobby for another behind closed doors. That misalignment can damage investor value.

Similarly, just over a year after the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, 2023 and following revelations about the company’s vigorous lobbying against stronger safety regulations and increased staffing, Norfolk Southern shareholders voted in significant numbers (38.9 percent) to demand that the company better inform shareholders about how it spends millions of dollars on lobbying every year.

Significant numbers of shareholders at Amazon, Verizon, IBM, Alcoa, Morgan Stanley, RTX, and L3Harris Technologies all also voted for stronger lobbying transparency policies and disclosures.

Direct action by shareholders to increase corporate transparency and accountability and, in turn, reduce investor risk and improve company resiliency, offers promising outside-Washington D.C. opportunities for positive change in 2025.

As corporate lobbyists and political cronies prepare to descend on the White House and federal agencies in the new year, investors can flex their power to push the companies they own to shine light on how they are spending money to influence policies, regulations, and American government.