06 May 2025 National Center Proposals Take Center Stage at Bristol Myers Squibb Meeting

Washington, D.C. — At today’s annual Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) shareholder meeting, investors will consider only two shareholder proposals – and both are being put forward by the same proponent, the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Proposal 4 requests that BMS “create a board committee on corporate financial sustainability to oversee and review the impact of the Company’s policy positions, advocacy, partnerships and charitable giving on social and political matters, and the effect of those actions on the Company’s financial sustainability.”

Proposal 5 explicitly requests that BMS “consider abolishing its DEI program, policies, Department, and goals.”

In its supporting statement for Proposal 4, “Shareholder Proposal on Corporate Financial Sustainability,” the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) notes that BMS “has a 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) ‘Corporate Equality Index.’ Earning that score arguably requires spending shareholder assets to embrace highly partisan positions on hot-button issues, such as supporting legislation that eliminates religious liberties and discriminates against girls and women while opposing legislation to protect children from adult materials.”

Additionally:

The Company has been rated “high risk” by the 1792 Exchange on its “Spotlight Bias Report,” which is published to “shed light on corporate activism” and lists the following as potential concerns for BMS: (1) BMS “claims to protect its employees from viewpoint discrimination but fired multiple employees who refused to get Covid-19 vaccinations due to religious reasons.” (2) “BMS has pledged to vet vendors based on LGBTQ policies,” which may result in discriminating against religious vendors.

The Company has taken public and politically divisive positions over issues of significant social policy concern, including apparently supporting “the ill-named Equality Act” even though “scholars and legal experts [argue] that the law would eviscerate female sports and cancel federal religious freedom protections.”

The Company is also listed as a Champion Tier Brand Partner by the Trevor Project, an organization that supports “gender affirming care,” which critics have argued translates into advocating for dangerous puberty blockers and genital mutilation for children. Trevor Project has also been accused of facilitating the hiding of gender confusion problems from parents.

Recent events have made clear that company bottom-lines, and therefore value to shareholders, drop when companies take overtly political and divisive positions that alienate consumers.

Stefan Padfield

As he puts forward Proposal 5, “Shareholder Proposal on a Request to Cease DEI Efforts,” FEP Director Stefan Padfield will say:

Bristol Myers Squibb’s DEI program currently includes practices and initiatives that discriminate on the basis of race and sex, and accordingly raise the specter of being illegal, unethical, and/or value-destroying. For example, Bristol Myers Squibb promotes race-based employee resource groups, has established race-based workforce representation goals, and advocates for supplier diversity commitments and other “affirmative action” policies.

Now, since submitting our proposal, Bristol Myers Squibb has apparently been busy scrubbing both references to affirmative action and supplier diversity from the websites we link to in our proposal. Thankfully, the wonders of the internet allow us to easily pull up those pages as they were at the time of our submission.

Some might argue that scrubbing these pages signals a retreat from divisive and discriminatory DEI practice by Bristol Myers Squibb, and that such a retreat should be applauded by those who seek a world wherein people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

But the problem with that perspective is that Bristol Myers Squibb fails to mention these changes in its opposition statement. If scrubbing those web pages was part of a sincere retreat from discriminatory DEI, we would expect the company to say so clearly in its opposition statement. Instead, the company apparently confuses platitudes with governance. For example, the company says: “We believe our inclusion philosophy leads to greater financial and patient outcomes and generates shareholder value.” But what shareholders want to know is: How are you measuring that? How, precisely, are you implementing your “inclusion philosophy”? How much are you spending on those initiatives, and how are you measuring the ROI of those expenditures? And if the board concludes such things are for some reason beyond measurement, such that shareholders should just rely on what the board believes – then say that.

Labeling race and sex discrimination “inclusion” doesn’t make it good.

In addition to requesting that shareholders vote YES on Items 4 and 5, FEP has published an entire voting scorecard for Bristol Myers Squibb shareholders as part of its Proxy Navigator voting guide, including these recommendations:

Item 1: Board of directors: VOTE AGAINST THE ENTIRE BOARD.
Item 2: Executive compensation: ABSTAIN.
Item 3: Ratification of auditors: ABSTAIN.
Item 4: Shareholder Proposal on Corporate Financial Sustainability: FOR. This is our first proposal.
Item 5: Shareholder Proposal on a Request to Cease DEI Efforts: FOR. This is our second proposal.

About

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about this proposal can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates here.

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