[JauntTrooper]

Some additional details: The proposal was submitted by an individual shareholder.

She requests that the Board "commission a report assessing the implications of siting Microsoft cloud datacenters in countries of significant human rights concern, and the Company’s strategies for mitigating these impacts."

She specifically cites the 2024 completion of a Microsoft datacenter in Saudi Arabia, citing a "State Department report [that] details the highly restrictive Saudi control of all internet activities and pervasive government surveillance, arrest, and prosecution of online activity."

The Board opposes the proposal because it believes Microsoft already discloses extensive disclosures on key human rights risks, and has an independent assessment each year of how they manage risks and its commitment to protecting freedom of expression and user privacy. They also re-iterate the need to comply with local laws and legally binding requests for customer data.

The proposal is non-binding, so the Board doesn't have to act on it even in the unlikely event it gets majority support (ESG proposals rarely do, especially in this environment). In practice many Boards do choose to act on majority-supported non-binding shareholder proposals, though, because many shareholders will vote against directors the following year if they don't.

[embedding-shape]

> Microsoft already discloses extensive disclosures on key human rights risks, and has an independent assessment each year of how they manage risks and its commitment to protecting freedom of expression and user privacy

Where can one find those extensive disclosures, especially for year 2024/2025? I'd love to hear how Microsoft are protecting freedom of expression and user privacy in a country like Saudi Arabia, which has a track record of excelling at whatever you'd call the opposite of those two things.

[firesteelrain]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/rep...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/hum...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/rep...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/rep...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/gov...

[aunty_helen]

This is the canned response for advising against a shareholder proposal. We’re already doing x, no need to vote for this nitwits shareholder proposal.

Another example that was written almost exactly the same, when a shareholder asked what Caterpillar were doing to avoid their machinery being used for deforestation in at risk locations.

If you’ve heard of activist investors, this is their battle ground. Buying enough of a company, tabling votes and then getting their preferred board candidates and shareholder votes put through.

[elygre]

Is the full proposal available online?

[aunty_helen]

Check the latest proxy statement for the AGM. This is where these votes are brought up in advance and then at the meeting they’re voting on, along with board seats.

[JauntTrooper]

Yes. Here is the proxy statement with the proposals: https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000789019/0...

You have to scroll down a bit to page 83 to get to the one the article is referencing.

[sigil]

Are human rights concerns running cover for more straightforward financial interests here? Norway and Saudi Arabia are both petrostates with large sovereign wealth funds.

[alephnerd]

Not in this case.

Norway's SWF has become increasingly politicized [0] due to the death of the center and the rise of the populist left and right, which is a common issue for any SWF in a Western Democracy. The same thing happened with CalPERS, the Alaska Permanent Fund, Australia's Future Fund, and the Ontario Teacher's Fund as well because these funds are not firewalled off from politicians, thus making them ripe for a populist conversion into ideologically activist funds (this is a both sides problems - as can be seen in California [1] and Florida's [2] case).

A major reason why the gold standard of SWFs are funds like Singapore's Temasek, Japan's GPIF, or South Korea's KIC is because they work hard to remain technocratic in nature and single minded about their goal: provide an economic base for self sufficiency for their citizens should adverse economic crises hit, along with the economic cushion to underwrite social security and welfare programs.

At some point for an SWF, too much "democracy" just becomes a hinderance to the underlying mission, which in Norway's case, building a SWF to support Norwegian state pensions in perpetuity once their oil wealth dries up.

Complaining about "woke/ESG investments" (like in Florida) or stunting about "human rights abuses" (like in CalPERS or Norway's case) doesn't actually shift the needle one way or the other because most other institutional investors (public and private) are much more single-minded about their aims, and a number of funds and LPs have begun to reject investments from politicized SWFs because of the headaches associated with a fund that wasn't supported to be an activist fund dealing with an internal conflict over becoming one or not.

SWFs are a fundamental weapon in a government's economic arsenal, and using them in a non-strategic but politically popular manner leads to you only stealing the future from your kids - as can be seen with the woes the Alaska Permanent Fund now faces due to populist promising of constantly raising the Alaska dividend.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-el...

[1] - https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-...

[2] - https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desan...

[lenkite]

Good way to break up a behemoth and let the pursuit of Digital Sovereignty be initiated everywhere!

[hrnnnnnn]

Norway isn't part of the EU.

[cocoalba]

How is Saudi internet policing that different to Germany, UK and others? Just yesterday an American satirist had his computer seized in German

[crazybonkersai]

Western Internet policing is done to preserve our freedom, while Saudi's policing is to oppress people. Simple as that. /s