The 2025 annual general meeting (AGM) season has delivered more technical climate debates and a new set of tactics from activists. Companies have generally responded well to pressure on governance issues, climate strategies, meeting access and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI). Shareholders have used director protest votes, questions at AGMs and director self-nominations to express their views and seek to drive change.
In this article, we look at 5 key takeaways from this year’s AGMs of ASX200 companies.
Increased director protest votes
Director elections emerged as a primary channel for shareholder dissent this year. Shareholders voted against director elections and re-elections to show their dissatisfaction across a spectrum of issues, including culture, governance, climate and transaction-specific matters.
A series of high-profile board chairs, committee chairs and other directors have faced significant protest votes this year. Some were ousted from the board completely. A prominent example is the James Hardie shareholders voting to remove the chairwoman, Anne Lloyd, and two other directors, Peter-John Davis and Rada Rodriguez, in a protest against the handling of the company’s $14 billion acquisition of its American competitor Azek.
Another is Ann Pickard, the chair of Woodside’s climate risk committee, who faced an almost 20% protest vote against her re-election in May. While she was re-elected, the scale of the protest vote shows the level of shareholder attention on energy companies’ climate strategies.
In October, Super Retail Group’s chairwoman Judith Swales received a 25% vote against her re-election in response to the company’s handling of a matter involving the CEO, one year after she was appointed as chair.
This pattern was identified in our lessons at half-time article outlining the ASX200 AGMs in the first half of this year. The full year picture shows more of the same with some directors continuing to face opposition for their involvement in board sustainability committees.
More technical climate conversations
Questions about climate and nature became more technical at this year’s AGMs. Companies were questioned by experts with scientific training or at the forefront of academic research. Questions related to transition strategies and their alignment with the Paris Agreement, assumptions about offsets, scope 3 emissions and biodiversity impacts.
Banks, insurers and energy producers faced questions from such experts about financed emissions and project-level exposures. Retailers were asked about supply chain impacts in fisheries and agriculture. Miners were asked how they will reduce absolute emissions and avoid dependencies on offsets and carbon credits. It is clear that climate issues remain a core part of investor concerns and more informed questions are being asked at AGMs.
Self-nominations as leverage
This season saw an emerging tactic where shareholders self-nominated for board seats as leverage to secure governance changes. This tactic appears to be used (a) to gain a platform to express concerns about the company’s transparency, oversight and meeting access and (b) to prompt a change by the company, by providing that the nomination will be withdrawn if the governance change is made (e.g. the AGM is held as a hybrid rather than a physical AGM). These nominations have not been successful, but they do give shareholders a mouthpiece to press for reforms and to signal dissatisfaction.
Stephen Mayne, a journalist and shareholder activist, self-nominated for 17 boards in October in a bid to push companies to make governance or procedural changes. Amongst the many issues that he agitates for, is more time between the release of results and the close of director nominations to allow shareholders to intervene on board composition.
Shareholder focus on artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence became a key focus of AGM question time this year. Boards across all sectors, not just technology, were asked how AI is being deployed, what productivity gains are expected and what that means for employees.
For example, at the IAG AGM in October, an investor asked the chair what IAG’s policy or attitude is towards AI and (cheekily) whether IAG will use it to replace staff, starting with the board. The chair took the question in his stride, confirming that IAG uses AI in a controlled way and agreeing that replacing boards with AI would make it a lot easier!
In June, we cautioned that AI tools were able to join, record and transcribe meetings and that meeting technology needed to be secured accordingly. By October and November, companies needed to be able to respond to questions about identifying the business processes that were most amenable to AI-enabled efficiencies and explaining governance frameworks for AI risk.
The use of AI to prepare for and present at AGMs has also been questioned this year. Australia’s largest proxy advisers for retail shareholders and superannuation funds have warned two ASX-listed companies about the use of AI at their AGMs. In one instance, Kogan.com Ltd used AI-generated voices for its CEO and CFO’s remarks at their AGM.
Boards should expect AI to remain a fixture of AGM scrutiny in 2026. As our challenges for boards: governance & AI article outlines, companies should prepare robust AI governance and risk frameworks and directors need to stay informed about AI development and best practices.
More shareholder-led resolutions about nature
Shareholder-led resolutions have increasingly focused on nature this season. The big banks, supermarkets and companies in the energy sector have been the target of these resolutions.
This year, ACF, SIX, Australian Ethical Investment and Melior Investment Management focused on deforestation and the environmental effects of farmed seafood.
Notwithstanding resolutions at AGMs held so far were never put to the AGM (because the constitutional amendment on which they were conditional did not pass), the resolutions nevertheless received not insignificant support in some cases. For example, just over 34% of Woolworths Group Limited’s proxy votes were in favour of enhanced disclosure on farmed seafood.
