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(Adds Morrisons comment)
By James Davey
LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Morrisons on Thursday
became the latest British supermarket group to be targeted by
activist shareholders over the amount of unhealthy food it
sells.
Responsible investment group ShareAction said it, along with
seven institutional investors managing $1.1 trillion between
them, had written to Morrisons Chairman Andrew Higginson ahead
of the grocer's annual shareholders' meeting calling on it to
boost sales of healthier food and drink products.
Last month market leader Tesco agreed to increase
healthy food options at operations in Europe and Britain to
appease investors co-ordinated by ShareAction who had filed a
landmark shareholder resolution to force the issue.
ShareAction has also previously targeted Barclays
and HSBC on the issue of climate change.
The Morrisons investors signing the letter included NEST,
Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, JO Hambro Capital Management and
Castlefield Investment Partners.
They noted that Morrisons has a target to increase the
number of healthier own-brand products to 65% of all own-brand
products by 2025 but said this did not go far enough.
“While Morrisons has made significant progress in reducing
the calorie, salt and sugar content of its own-brand products,
questions remain about the company’s strategy and overall
exposure to growing regulatory pressure and consumer trends
supporting healthier diets," said Ignacio Vazquez, senior
manager at ShareAction, which co-ordinated the letter.
The investors want Morrisons to disclose the share
of total food and non-alcoholic drink annual sales by volume
made up of healthier products, and to publish a long-term target
to significantly increase that share.
They also want Morrisons to update on its progress towards
targets in its annual reports from 2022 onwards.
They noted that of Britain's listed supermarket groups -
Tesco, No. 2 Sainsbury's and No. 4 Morrisons -
Morrisons is the only one yet to set sales-based health targets.
"We are committed to helping our customers make healthier
choices and we are supportive of measuring performance and
setting meaningful targets," said a Morrisons spokesperson.
"We already publish the proportion of our own brand products
which are classed as healthy and have a commitment to increase
this."
(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Richard Pullin and David
Evans)
