Energy & Science

Exxon Mobil’s Last-Ditch Attempt to Stave Off a Climate Coup

  • Shareholders were pressed on proxy fight in middle of meeting
  • ‘It didn’t feel good as an investor,’ one fund manager says

Photographer: Barry Lewis/In Pictures/Getty Images

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It was a stunning moment for Exxon Mobil Corp. and the wider corporate world: a tiny activist fund had succeeded in changing the company’s board.

But in the hours leading up to this week’s annual shareholders meeting, Exxon went to extraordinary lengths to head off the threat from a campaign about which it had been largely dismissive months earlier.