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JLens and ADL Applaud Microsoft Shareholders’ Vote to Reject BDS-Aligned Proposal 9 at Annual Meeting
JLens and ADL Applaud Microsoft Shareholders’ Vote to Reject BDS-Aligned Proposal 9 at Annual Meeting
About this update from Microsoft Corp.
[{"type":"text","content":"\nJLens and ADL sound alarm on growing support of anti-Israel campaigns in the corporate arena\n\n NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nJLens, a Registered Investment Advisor affiliated with ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), welcomes the vote by Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: MSFT) shareholders AGAINST Proposal 9 at the Company’s 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting. This shareholder resolution, aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement, called for conflict-specific human rights due diligence targeting Israel.\nThis press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251209381539/en/\nConsistent with the Board of Directors’ recommendation, the proposal was opposed by more than 70% of voting shares at Microsoft’s 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting, marking a decisive rejection of a clearly politically-motivated proposal.\n\nHowever, JLens notes that this anti-Israel proposal had an alarmingly high number of co-filers, with more than 50 shareholders, including religious groups, financial institutions and individuals, and, regrettably, it received support from a major proxy advisory firm.\n\nThe proposal also received backing from Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, which JLens research shows has a documented pattern of disproportionately targeting companies with business ties to Israel.\n\n“We are happy to see that Microsoft shareholders saw through this proposal and rejected an anti-Israel campaign masquerading as human-rights oversight,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of ADL. “While we welcome the outcome, the scale of coordination behind this proposal underscores the need for continued vigilance against politicized, BDS efforts in the corporate arena.”\n\nWhile its proponents framed the proposal as a call for human rights due diligence, JLens and ADL warned this was clearly a single-country, single-conflict political campaign aligned with the BDS movement, designed to pressure companies to disengage from doing business with and in Israel.\n\n“It is clear this proposal had nothing to do with protecting shareholders from risk or maximizing shareholder value, and everything to do with advancing a biased anti-Israel campaign,” said Ari Hoffnung, Managing Director of JLens and Senior Advisor on Corporate Advocacy at...