Shareholder activism is widespread among the largest U.S. public companies, with diverse activists pursuing campaigns on issues ranging from governance to policy through shareholder proposals and strategic voting. As shareholder activism has continued to grow, it has spread to public companies based in Silicon Valley. In recent years, investors and activist shareholders alike have increasingly focused their attention on public companies’ efforts to address larger environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. However, this focus softened somewhat in the 2025 proxy season alongside a surge in campaigns challenging ESG priorities, and a decrease in proposals overall.
This report summarizes significant developments related to stockholder voting at annual meetings during the 2025 proxy season among the technology and life sciences companies included in the Fenwick – Bloomberg Law Silicon Valley 150 List (SV 150).
Access the Full Report
Our report also includes stockholder voting developments at the large public companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100), as trends typical in the S&P 100 often spill over to Silicon Valley-based companies. Over time, Silicon Valley-based companies have grown in both size and influence. In this report, we highlight statistics underscoring developments in annual meeting participation, director elections, say-on-pay, and a variety of other compensation, governance, and policy matters. Our data tracks these trends in detail over time and includes five-year trend data covering the 2021–2025 proxy seasons for annual meeting participation, director elections, say-on-pay, and other proposals.
Selected 2025 Highlights:
- Support for stockholder proposals decreased at SV 150 companies and at S&P 100 companies. Average support across all categories of stockholder proposals (compensation, governance, policy issues, and general business) decreased for the SV 150 companies, from 20.4% in 2024 to 18.0% in 2025, with a sharp decrease in support for governance-related proposals (44.2% in 2024; 29.8% in 2025), but a fairly significant increase in support for compensation proposals (9.5% in 2024; 22.5% in 2025). For the S&P 100, average support decreased across all categories of stockholder proposals from 17.1% in 2024 to 12.5% in 2025.
- The total number of stockholder proposals on which SV 150 companies voted increased slightly in 2025, while the total number of stockholder proposal on which S&P 100 companies voted decreased significantly. The number of stockholder proposals at SV 150 companies increased slightly from 65 in 2024 to 67 in 2025. The S&P 100 saw a significant decrease from 309 in 2024 to 204 in 2025. This decrease can be attributed to an overall decrease in the number of governance proposals (54 in 2024; 34 in 2025) and proposals related to policy issues (226 in 2024; 147 in 2025).
- The number of stockholder proposals passing at SV 150 companies decreased in 2025. Two stockholder proposals passed in 2025, compared to five proposals in 2024 (four related to the elimination of supermajority voting and one related to shareholder ability to call special meetings).
- The number of company proposals for the SV 150 decreased in 2025. SV 150 companies had 96 company proposals in 2025, compared to 98 in 2024.
- SV 150 companies saw more support for say-on-pay proposals in 2025. One SV 150 company failed its say-on-pay vote, compared to six failures in 2024, and the average percentage of votes “for” of shares cast (ignoring broker non-votes and abstentions) for say-on-pay proposals was 88.5%, compared to 87.0% in 2024 and 84.8% in 2023.