As Vanguard Searches for Next CEO, Local Quakers Gather At Vanguard Headquarters for Prayer Protest
Vanguard is the World’s Largest Investor in Fossil Fuels Causing Climate Change
Malvern, PA – Today, a group of about 40 area Quakers and people of other faiths took the Quaker prayer service, meeting for worship, from their meeting houses to the entrance of Vanguard headquarters. They were praying for Vanguard corporate leadership to choose a new CEO who will lead Vanguard, the world’s largest investor in coal, oil, and gas, to more sustainable investing.
In March, Vanguard announced that CEO Tim Buckley will retire at the end of this year and that the company is conducting a search for its next CEO. Under Buckley’s leadership, Vanguard became the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, quit a major climate change commitment, and has voted against almost all environmental and social shareholder action at the corporations in which it invests.
Protest participants sat in silence as Vanguard employees and other drivers whizzed by, with participants occasionally standing to share a message when moved to do so. Around them were banners with messages like “Vanguard invests in climate destruction.”
“Under Tim Buckley’s leadership, Vanguard has failed to adequately address the risks of climate change,” said Lina Blount, Director Strategy and Partnerships of the Earth Quaker Action Team. “Buckley’s retirement now offers Vanguard’s board an opportunity to steer the company in a new direction: one that puts responsible business over politics, puts long-term financial security over short-term fossil fuel profit, and helps ensure a livable planet for all of us.”
The prayer action is part of the ongoing global Vanguard S.O.S. campaign. Through protests, phone calls, letters, petitions, and other actions over the past two years, campaigners have been asking Vanguard to use its influence as a major shareholder to push the companies it invests in to significantly reduce their emissions, and exit its investments in fossil fuel companies that refuse to transition their businesses to be in alignment with a livable future.
This semester, students from Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and Temple University have protested Vanguard’s investments at on-campus job fairs and conferences where Vanguard sent representatives. Earlier this year, a group from Philadelphia’s famous Mummers Parade held a playful parade protest on Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley’s block in Wayne, urging Buckley to make 2024 the year that Vanguard invests for a livable future.
On Tuesday, researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada, in partnership with As You Sow, released a new report finding that more than 2 million employees from 12 major tech companies could have earned an estimated $5.1 billion in additional returns had their companies moved to decarbonize their retirement plan holdings – largely in Vanguard and BlackRock target date funds – 10 years ago.
Photos of the event can be found here.
Contact: Eve Gutman, Earth Quaker Action Team, eve@eqat.org
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