MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp. activist investor Engine No. 1 expanded its presence on the oil giant’s board to three seats, reported Bloomberg with reference to preliminary vote tallies.
The initial counts show the newest nominee from Engine No. 1’s slate elected to Exxon’s 12-member board is private-equity investor Alexander Karsner, Exxon said Wednesday in a statement. The results, which still need to be certified, confirmed an earlier report by Bloomberg News.
Karsner joins Gregory Goff, former chief executive officer of refiner Andeavor, and environmental scientist Kaisa Hietala, whose victories were announced last week shortly after Exxon’s May 26 annual general meeting. The Western world’s biggest oil company managed to place nine of its nominees onto the board.
Exxon investors also for the first time approved proposals requiring the company to disclose political- and climate-lobbying activities, according to a filing, despite staunch opposition from incumbent directors.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods captured about 2.67 million votes, placing him in the bottom half of the field. Lead Director Ken Frazier fared only marginally better with a seventh-place showing.
A third seat for Engine No. 1 caps a months-long proxy fight and provides a coda to last week’s dramatic meeting, which at one point was halted so that the company could have more time to count the votes.
The shift in Exxon’s boardroom may present a crippling blow to the future leadership of Woods, according to Ceres, a coalition of environmentally active investors managing USD37 trillion. Woods told shareholders earlier last month that voting for the dissident directors would “derail our progress and jeopardize your dividend.”
The three Engine No. 1’s nominees join nine members from the company’s slate, including Jeff Ubben and Michael Angelakis, who were the top vote getters last week and were originally added to the board as part of a pact with another investor, D.E. Shaw & Co.
As MRC informed previously, Sinopec Engineering (Group) and ExxonMobil (Huizhou) Chemical (EMHCC) have recently entered into a BEPC (basic design, engineering, procurement and construction) contract for the proposed Huizhou Chemical Complex Project (Phase I). The main units of the project include a 1.6 million tonnes/year ethylene flexible feed steam cracker, downstream polymer and derivative units and utilities. The main product units include two performance polyethylene (PE) lines and two differentiated performance polypropylene (PP) lines.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of PE and PP, respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 576,270 tonnes in the first three month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 410,890 tonnes in January-March 2021, up by 56% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world"s energy.
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