Have those concerns played out so far in 2026 in your view? Yeah, that's

right.

I think last year when the Trump administration came into office, there were a lot of negative headlines.

Whether that was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, pulling back clean energy tax credits through the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, or stopping permitting on wind and solar projects, they were putting their fingers on the scale against renewables in favor of fossil fuels.

And it definitely did have an impact, including slowdowns in home solar installations and EV sales, at least in the short term.

And shares of related companies were largely out of favor last year.

Now, I will say, talking to investors at the end of 2025, there was actually this strange subdued optimism that things could only go up.

what about investment stewardship? There was a lot of concern about regulatory changes there as well.

rob with your focus on shareholder activism and engagement in the u.s what should we expect in the year ahead

That's a good question.

So 2026, we actually expect to see major challenges to shareholder proposals and corporate engagement.

For one, we actually saw a huge drop last year.

The number of shareholder proposals was down 23% in the 2025 proxy season.

And that drop was particularly noteworthy for ESG issues like human rights, which were down 41% from the prior year.

Climate was down 38%.

And curious, are there any positive takeaways from the deregulation agenda?

Curious to hear from you, what regulatory changes have we seen in the early days of the new administration and what do we expect going forward?

Well, the changes have really come fast and furious since the inauguration in January.

For purposes of this discussion, I'm going to set aside the one big beautiful bill, which we know is going to slow a lot of decarbonization investments through rollbacks on clean energy credits.

I really just want to focus on changes that may impact how investors are able to actually integrate ESG analysis into the process.

This really starts with disclosures.

The current SEC leadership withdrew support for previously issued climate disclosure rules, which required companies to disclose both the financial impacts and the greenhouse gas emissions.

So without required disclosures, U.S. investors basically have to rely on voluntary disclosures, and those tend to be both inconsistent and incomplete, especially when you look at other developed markets like Europe.

So curious to hear maybe how companies are responding to these changes.

And I'm just wondering what you are seeing and how you think companies are responding.

Yeah, thanks, Gail.

I would say there was an executive order that came within the first day of the administration, basically not only banning quote-unquote illegal DEI at the government level and across contractors, but also kind of tasking all the agencies to work with the Department of Justice to identify potential enforcement actions.

So really, it's not just about government service, which it was in the first administration.

It really is impacting companies now.

Now, the rub there is that the executive order called out illegal dei which it doesn't really define what that is that you know it reminds me of those drug commercials you see where it's you know don't take if allergic and obviously you shouldn't take if it's allergic but also how would you know if you're allergic if you've never taken it before so it's it's um because it's so vague you have um companies are now just very I guess timid is the right word.

They don't necessarily want to test where those boundaries are.

And Rob, can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing on the governance regulation side, anything in terms of shareholder rights engagement?