Just looking at blonde-haired and spectacled Tracey Davies, it’s easy to believe her when she says she dislikes confrontation.
Less so, however, when you see her grilling the directors of some of SA’s largest companies in her capacity as executive director of Just Share, a shareholder activist organisation that has been making waves at annual general meetings (AGMs) lately.
The non-profit organisation has been prominent behind a push for large listed SA companies to put climate-related resolutions on the agenda at annual meetings. It also engages with corporates on other environmental, social and governance issues.
“I’m a total people-pleaser so I cannot explain to you how I have ended up doing this,” Davies says with a laugh. “I guess it’s underpinned by everything we do. We are absolutely sure of the facts. We are sure of the law.”
An avid reader, Davies rarely gets to sit down with a good book. But she always makes time to run — a way to process anxiety.
“It is a very stressful job,” she says. “We are conscious of the responsibility we have in doing this. There is a constant, ongoing analysis: are we doing the right thing; is this the right strategy; are these the right people; are we being fair? It’s really intense all the time.”
Born into a middle-class family in the late 1970s and a pupil at private school in Johannesburg, Davies did well in her studies but never had a big-picture plan and ended up doing law almost as a default.
With BA and LLB degrees, she went on to work at a big firm but found corporate law “soulless and bleak”. It was a stint at the Hillbrow magistrate’s court, as part of her articles, in which she was faced with injustice, desperation and poverty that left a lasting impression that would fundamentally shape her career path.
We were intimidated, of course — petrified — because we were these little environmental lawyers from an NGO
— Tracey Davies, executive director of Just Share
She went on to obtain a master’s in criminal justice at New York University and moved to the UK where she became a public defender — a job she describes as “overwhelmingly depressing”. Davies decided to give the corporate world another go at a commercial law firm in London, but after two years was affirmed in her aversion to corporate law. She married, travelled across Africa for almost a year and fell pregnant, at which time Davies and her husband decided to move back to SA.
Over time, Davies had developed an interest in environmental law and was aware of the work of the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), an activist law firm founded in 2009. When a position opened, she recalls “for the first time I saw a job and thought: that feels right”.
She joined as a senior attorney and, on realising there was a huge problem with corporate compliance with environmental laws in SA, the group increasingly found itself doing corporate accountability work.
Davies recounts how she and a colleague were unwittingly thrust into an investor roadshow with asset managers that an analyst had set up on their behalf.
“We were intimidated, of course — petrified — because we were these little environmental lawyers from an NGO [non-governmental organisation]. We were going into all these cushy offices where all of these very intimidating men [were] and we were talking about all the bad things the companies they were invested in were doing,” she says.
Proxy voting
It ended up being an empowering experience. “We assumed asset managers knew all of these things and just weren’t taking action. And what we realised was that they were, mostly, unaware of these issues … we realised we did have something to offer, that our knowledge could be useful to the investment sector.”
It was the Raith Foundation that funded the CER’s corporate accountability programme. The foundation itself was progressive, Davies notes. At the time, Raith drew up its own responsible investment policy, took their proxy voting back from their asset manager and started attending AGMs and asking questions.
Out of the programme Just Share was born. It split out of the CER in early 2018 — and soon made a name for itself.
Just Share doesn’t have stakes so large that it’s enough to make a difference as a shareholder in a company.
“The aim is to use the rights we have as a shareholder, no matter how small, to get issues onto the agenda that the institutional investors should be doing themselves but don’t,” Davies says. When Just Share does put the issues on the table, it has found that institutional investors not only engage but also increasingly back resolutions.
Notably, Standard Bank in 2019 became the first listed company to table a climate resolution — two in fact, as supported by Just Share — one of which was passed by shareholders compelling the bank to adopt and publish policy on coal funding.
Just Share often appears as an adversary to corporate SA. “What comes into the public domain is all about the big fights. What people don’t see is everything that happens before that,” says Davies.
I’m not sure how likable we are, but we are smart and we have clear eyes and clear hearts”
— Brynn O’Brien, executive director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility
That is, engagement over a number of years and much time spent with people within the companies themselves.
Davies says she has learnt that “most people are decent human beings just trying to do their jobs”. Also, “in all of these institutions there are internal champions — people who understand the issues and have been working for years to get companies to take it on board. What we do gives them leverage within their organisations.”
But there often comes a point where companies think they have gone far enough and Just Share doesn’t.
“That point at which there is a deadlock is the point where asset managers stop. There is no escalation. Our role is to get to that point and not just walk away — that’s the activism.”
Davies does not enjoy the antagonism, “but there’s too much unaccountable corporate power; someone has to challenge that”, she says.
Asked about likeability, Davies recalls a quote from Brynn O’Brien, executive director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, who said: “I’m not sure how likable we are, but we are smart and we have clear eyes and clear hearts.”
Davies says: “We do really believe that this stuff is important — its needs to be said and people need to be challenged. And when you speak to them and you are sure of your facts and your argument, and you are willing to listen, it gives you a confidence in the work that I never thought I would have.”
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