EOS 2025 Annual Review and UTAM’s Engagement Highlights

EOS at Federated Hermes, which has provided stewardship services to UTAM since 2019, has released its 2025 Annual Review. The UTAM-specific companion to the full review, available in the Reports section of our website, highlights stewardship activities and progress on key priorities – and features results and statistics drawn from UTAM’s engagements.

As we mark 25 years of managing the University of Toronto’s Endowment portfolio, UTAM President and CIO Chuck O’Reilly reflects on what effective stewardship requires. His introductory message centres on how collaboration multiplies UTAM’s ability to drive change. “By partnering with EOS, we extend our reach, benefit from focused engagement expertise, and strategically amplify our influence,” he writes.

On behalf of UTAM, EOS in 2025 engaged with 676 companies on 3,205 issues and objectives related to environmental, social, governance, strategy, risk and communication concerns:

Engagement priorities

For several years, EOS’s engagement activities have prioritized four broad themes: Climate Change, Human and Labour Rights, Human Capital and Board Effectiveness. Alongside these core themes, EOS also addresses emerging critical areas of concern, including nature and biodiversity; AI and its associated risks; the impacts of fast fashion; plastics and the circular economy; corporate tax practices; and ethical conduct. These engagement priorities are rooted in proven financial materiality across different sectors to support long-term, risk-adjusted returns for clients.

Board Effectiveness: EOS continues to seek improvements in board function, composition and structure. A corporate board should continuously assess the prevailing company culture to ensure alignment with purpose, strategy and returns on capital employed.

The Energy Transition and Extreme Weather: As part of its pragmatic approach to climate-related opportunities and risks, EOS engages companies to ensure that capital allocations, revenue growth and cost mitigation of energy transition and physical risks are aligned with the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. This focus includes high methane-emitting industries associated with the AI ecosystem.

Human and Labour Rights: EOS continues to focus on the protection of human rights in high-risk regions, with an emphasis on supply chain rights where there is an elevated risk of forced labour, unsafe working conditions and value chain financial vulnerabilities. A related concern is safeguarding human rights in the virtual world. This includes ensuring data privacy rights and freedom of expression, as well as protection from unfair bias, which the use of AI may amplify.

Human Capital: We are likely to see job disruption through the deployment of AI and robotics, as well as from the ongoing energy transition. EOS’s engagement efforts remain focused on upskilling and reskilling workers, and on encouraging merit-based hiring practices that avoid discrimination. EOS also supports improved health and safety measures – including managing heat stress, psychological safety and mental wellbeing, as well as halting sexual harassment.

The 2025 Annual Review and UTAM Engagement Highlights is available in the Reports section of our website. As Chuck O’Reilly writes, reflecting on 25 years of UTAM stewardship: “Lasting impact is often achieved not by acting alone, but by working alongside others with complementary expertise to effect change.”