Former MetLife chairman Steven Kandarian has taken the 12th seat on Exxon Mobil Corp’s board, official tallies of a shareholder vote released Monday showed, edging out the former Caterpillar chief named a director in a preliminary count.
The tally was released more than three weeks after a vote that gave tiny hedge fund Engine No. 1 a quarter of the seats on the Exxon board.
Exxon took the unusual move of suspending its shareholder meeting for an hour before conducting an extensive Q&A between executives to keep voting open longer – a move that Engine No. 1 criticized.
The two top vote getters were former Comcast finance chief Michael Angelakis and activist investor Jeffrey Ubben, both appointed to the board in March as the company sought to fend off Engine No. 1.
Mr. Kandarian replaced former Caterpillar chief Douglas Oberhelman in the latest tally. Mr. Oberhelman originally was named to the 12th spot based on preliminary results released on June 2, but lost more than 29 million votes between the preliminary and final counts. Exxon has more than three million shareholders and four billion shares outstanding.
Former International Business Machines Corp. chief executive Samuel Palmisano and former Malaysian state oil company chief Wan Zulkiflee also lost their seats, the final vote count showed.
Exxon chief executive Darren Woods was the seventh place vote getter out of the 16 people vying for board seats.
Exxon did not respond to a request for comment and Engine No. 1 declined comment.
A shareholder proposal requesting an audited report on how a drop in fossil fuel demand under net zero 2050 scenarios would impact the company failed narrowly, garnering 49.4 per cent support.
At rival Chevron Corp., a similar measure was defeated with about 48 per cent of votes in favour.
Exxon shareholders approved measures calling on it to provide more information on its climate and grassroots lobbying efforts.