At Cadira Capital Management, our mission is "Connecting the Investment Chain and Beyond". Collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders are essential to achieving our mission. We therefore seek to deepen the relationship of trust with our stakeholders by disclosing specific details of our activities, including dialogue with the companies in which we invest.
This month, we'll report on the following activities.
Collaborative Dialogue with Marui Group
Cadira Capital Management organizes a collaborative dialogue session every few months to give listed companies that are leaders in sustainability the opportunity to communicate with a group of financial professionals and sustainability experts.
Most recently, in June, we held a session with Marui Group and about 40 people involved in impact finance.
Let's start with an overview of Marui Group. Since its founding in 1931, the company has consistently pursued a business model that combines retail and finance. In particular, its founding business was "installment sales of furniture". Since then, the company has changed the products it handles and the forms of provision over time, consistently pursuing a business model that combines retail and finance. Today, its mainstays are the urban commercial facility "Marui" and the credit card "Epos Card".
Marui Group distinguishes itself by placing sustainability considerations at the core of its management. In recent years, it has developed a business model with sustainability as the starting point. For example, Marui stores are increasing the amount of space for customers to "experience" products and services based on the concept of "stores that don't sell," reflecting a corporate stance of drawing a line in the sand with the mass consumption economic model. In the past, Marui used to charge its tenants a percentage of sales in its stores, but in recent years it has shifted to fixed rents. As a result, it has become possible to attract businesses that do not sell goods, such as showrooms for online specialty brands, and the use of the stores is expanding in ways different from those of traditional department stores. Its financial segment is also working to strengthen relationships with customers by increasing the number of credit card payments for essential and recurring payments such as rent and utility bills. In electricity in particular, the company has taken steps to strengthen relationships with sustainability-conscious consumers by becoming a strategic partner of Minna Denryoku, which provides 100% renewable energy.
In our collaborative dialogue session with Marui Group, the company explained the "Measurement and Management of Impact" that the company is strengthening its structure to pursue sustainability. Marui Group has established three impact themes: (1) Creating the future together for future generations, (2) Creating happiness together for each individual, and (3) Creating an ecosystem for co-creation. To enhance the feasibility of the three themes, Marui Group has made considerable efforts to organize its thinking by setting detailed KPIs and financial indicators and by creating a logic model that illustrates the path to achieving impact. Based on these materials, the company is also strengthening the driving force of its activities through repeated dialogues with internal and external stakeholders.
Participants asked questions from a variety of perspectives, including the relationship between impact and finance, how to leverage the strengths of Marui Group, how to build an internal structure, and how to incorporate customer feedback. Meanwhile, there was also active two-way communication, with an impact investment specialist responding to a question from Marui Group about investors' expectations of the logic model.
We organize our collaborative dialogues with the goal of providing listed companies with new insights and networking opportunities. We also aim to increase knowledge of the industry as a whole by enabling participating impact investors to learn about the initiatives of leading companies.
Cadira Capital Management builds relationships with companies through daily one-on-one meetings to increase the number of candidate companies that participate in collaborative dialogues. Our goal is to create collaborative dialogues from one-on-one meetings and expand the circle of relationships to ultimately change the social system in a positive direction.
On the Environmental NGO Shareholder Proposal to Mizuho Financial Group
In Japan, many shareholder meetings are held in June. At Cadira Capital Management, our portfolio managers review all shareholder proposals at the general meetings of the companies in which we invest and make individual decisions on whether to approve or disapprove.
One proposal of particular note in June was a shareholder proposal against Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (MFG) Several environmental NGOs proposed the following two amendments to the Articles of Incorporation:
(i) Competence of directors to effectively manage business risks and opportunities related to climate change
(ii) Evaluation of customers' climate change transition plans.
In order to properly understand the intent of the proposals, we held meetings with the three environmental NGOs involved in the proposals (Market Force, Climate Network and Rainforest Action Network).
Through the meeting, we reaffirmed that there is room for improvement in MFG's environmental response, but in exercising our voting rights, we decided to "oppose" the shareholder proposal. The reason for this is that with regard to (i), we could not judge the appropriateness of including it in the Articles of Incorporation, as it may not always be in the best interest of shareholders to focus on a specific issue such as climate change when electing directors. In addition, when we asked "Are there specific candidates for the Board of Directors if climate change is used as a criterion?", the proponents of this proposal replied that they could not provide a clear answer, which is another reason why we decided to vote "No" on this proposal.
Proposal (ii) is a proposal for MFG to strengthen the management system for the transition to decarbonization of its portfolio companies in the fossil fuel sector, and we decided to vote "No" based on our belief that there is no need to amend the Articles of Incorporation for this proposal as MFG has already provided specific measures. We voted "No" on the shareholder proposal.
Although we voted against this particular shareholder proposal, we believe that MFG's response to climate change needs to be further strengthened and, as investors, we will continue to urge MFG to strengthen its response and disclosure of that response.
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