Woke Business Managers Rebranding “ESG” Investment as “Responsible Business”
Meanwhile, Axios complains the Europeans are leading the US in ESG investing now!
I have been following the steady collapse of the renewable energy sector and the fact that “sustainability” funds are no longer sustainable.
Last summer, I reported that investment firm BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink said the term ESG (environmental social governance) had been weaponized as people began recognizing many failures linked to managing funds based on woke policies.
In ancient times, such a realization would have led wise business leaders to rethink priorities. Now, the marketers have decided to rebrand the whole concept as “Responsible Business.”
This assessment comes from The Wall Street Journal.
Following years of simmering investor backlash, political pressure and legal threats over environmental, social and governance efforts, a number of business leaders are now making a conscious effort to avoid the once widely used acronym for such initiatives.
On earnings calls, many chief executives now employ new approaches. Some companies, including Coca-Cola
, are rebranding corporate reports and committees, stripping ESG from titles. Advisers are coaching executives on alternative ways to describe their efforts, proposing new terms like “responsible business.” On Wall Street, meanwhile, some firms are closing once-popular ESG funds as interest fades.The shift in messaging reflects a reality: “ESG is complicated,” said Daryl Brewster, a former Kraft Foods and Nabisco executive who now heads Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, a nonprofit of more than 200 companies focused on social impact.
Interestingly, in late 2023, Goldman Sachs liquidated its ActiveBeta Paris-Aligned Climate U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management L.P. (“GSAM”), the investment adviser for the Goldman Sachs ActiveBeta® Paris-Aligned Climate U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF (the “Fund”), announced today that the Fund’s Board of Trustees, at the recommendation of GSAM, has approved a plan of liquidation (the “Plan”) for the Fund. Under the Plan, which is effective today, the Fund will begin the process of liquidating portfolio assets and unwinding its affairs in an orderly fashion over time. The Plan is not subject to shareholder approval.
Shareholders of the Fund may sell their shares on the Fund’s listing exchange, Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. (“Cboe”), until market close on January 12, 2024, and may incur transaction fees from their broker-dealer.
Meanwhile, progressives in our media are mourning this trend. This chestnut from Axios complains the Europeans are leading the US in ESG investing now.
The European lead in terms of ESG investing has widened substantially over the past two years, according to a new analysis by ShareAction that echoes similar findings from Morningstar.
Why it matters: The U.S. is home to the largest fund managers in the world — none more so than BlackRock, a company that turns out to have largely stopped voting for ESG resolutions over the past two years.
So, just how is the European economy doing?
The euro zone may have been in recession last quarter and prospects in the near term remain weak, European Central Bank policymakers said on Wednesday as they reaffirmed the bank’s policy stance.
Euro zone growth has been hovering on either size of zero for most of 2023 and only a mild pick up is seen this year, helping to cool inflation, which has overshot the ECB’s target for years and forced policymakers to raise interest rates to record highs last year.
“There is evidence that sentiment indicators are bottoming out, but the near-term economic outlook remains weak in line with our projections,” board member Isabel Schnabel said on social media platform X.
Her colleague, Vice President Luis de Guindos, meanwhile, suggested the bloc may have suffered a recession in the second half of last year and risks to future growth were tilted to the downside.
When your policies force people to use technologies that are not fully developed, are geared to rewarding people for their race and/or gender identity, and fail to consider reasonable profits for rewarding risk and innovation, then the tilt to the downside will likely be exceedingly steep. Just ask Larry Fink!
BlackRock is laying off around 3% of its global workforce, Chief Executive Larry Fink and President Rob Kapito announced in a memo to employees Tuesday.
“As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources,” the memo said, without elaborating further on who would be cut.
The cuts would amount to about 600 employees. The layoffs are not focused on any single team or division, a person familiar with the matter said.
According to the memo, BlackRock expects to have a larger workforce by the end of 2024 after adding to some of its growth areas, which include the exchange-traded fund business, private markets, outsourced CIO services and the company’s Aladdin software.
John Stossel offered a very humorous and informative review of the rebranding effort.
Time running out on the con called ESG?
Today's Wall Street Journal says investors realize that companies’ claims about "Environmental, Social and Governance” excellence are largely nonsense.
We warned about that years ago: pic.twitter.com/RLP82GFOBy
— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) January 9, 2024
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Comments
Shareholders should sue.
Absolutely they should. Any company doing this crap should be sued into oblivion. The board of directors does have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They do not have an obligation to help mentally ill teenage girls sleep at night.
Larry fink/kink getting paid to lose value for investors.
That’s what the Tennessee AG’s recent lawsuit against Blackrock is all about — a very strong Complaint alleging the defrauding of investors.
Blackrock’s marketing materials promote the company as a diligent and savvy investor and steward of its clients’ money, while simultaneously promoting its alleged “ESG” bona fides.
Except, it’s been well-known for years that adherence to “ESG” strictures placed on funds and investment strategies result in sub-par returns and underperformance, relative to rival funds and strategies. So, BlackRock is promoting two conceits that are in direct opposition to each other.
All of this doesn’t even address the company’s fiduciary obligations as an asset custodian and manager, to seek the highest possible return for its clients/investors.
Bottom line does not lie. Nice try, though. I agree with ChrisPeters, shareholder lawsuits on breach of fiduciary duty for a starter.
They’re ALWAYS rebranding.
First it was affirmative action. Then it was just plain ‘diversity’. Then it was ‘inclusive’. Then it was CRT. Then it was ESG. Every time when they wear out a term they try to jump to a new one to continue the con.
On the plus side, the effective life of each term is getting shorter and shorter.
So true. And, let’s not omit mention of the classic, obnoxiously overused Dhimmi-crat buzzword, “equity,” a word that was stolen from the private sector, and, which also was part of the “affirmative action” re-branding, under the new moniker “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
It sounds like “Goodwill” on the balance sheet, which analysts read as “Air,” except it’s positively disruptive to business as well.
Yeah, expensive air at that.
We all knew this was the game plan
If you are notIf you are not maximizing Shareholder value, that is the opposite of Responsible business
So then you are free to invest in the Euro stock index if you want to virtue signal. But it has underperformed no matter how you slice it and dice it.
I had predicted this. The vile Dhimmi-crats and Leftists are so utterly predictable.
As soon as one of the Left’s prized and contrived propaganda words or acronyms is subject to much-deserved scrutiny, criticism and mockery, they re-brand that word or acronym, ASAP. Same old excrement, in newer and shinier packaging.
There are other variants on this “ESG” nonsense that are just as noxious — one of the popular ones that the Dhimmi-crats love is “stakeholder capitalism,” which seeks to re-define the term “stakeholder,” which classically meant an actual investor who has risked his or her capital and who owns a share in a company. Now, instead of a company’s focus being properly and primarily on delivering returns for shareholders, the “stakeholder capitalism” conceit shifts the company’s focus to non-investor, Leftist parties, such as unions, non-profits, etc., who seek to influence the company’s decision-making (and, to procure a share of the company’s charitable donations), when they’ve risked nothing and investing nothing.
“…when they’ve risked nothing and invested nothing.”
Investors got “woke,” waking up to the fact that “ESG” is a transparent hustle that does nothing positive for the investor, except line the fund managers’/asset managers’ pockets.
It’s about the personal, Obama knew that and he and his crony’s like Jarrett , Holder, made sure they are all in positions of power
They are just playing with us with their “word” games
The transformation is near complete
Berkshire hathaway is still big on chevron and oxy. Warren buffett doesn’t take ESG seriously.
There are a couple of typos in this article. One of them is this:
“Last summer, I reported that investment firm BlackRock’s CEO Larry Kink …”
He’s not a “Kink”. He’s a “Fink”.
Works both ways.
Fouad: “Is funny because is literally true!”
Fixed. Thank you.
It’s all about that 2 ten thousandth part of the sucker’s investment portfolio. Ignorant, unsophisticated, emerging affluent investors are willing to pay 2 ten thousandths more of their portfolio value in advisory fees per year for bogus woke nonsense. So an advisor who is normally screwing his client with a 1 percent fee can make 20 percent more while delivering inferior performance, exclusive of fee. It’s quite a feat- financial psychotherapy that delivers lower returns and costs 20 percent more. Perhaps this is the root cause of the new antisemitism, Mr Fink?
Typo 20 ten thousandth.
Referencing Fink’s Jewish faith is totally obnoxious and unnecessary — his faith has nothing to do with anything, and sarcastically suggesting, that such behavior might animate anti-Semitism is just idiotic.
You’re out of line and you have some issues that you need to work out.
They spelled irresponsible wrong.
The reason everybody rushed to have billions stolen from them by Sam Bank-Fraud was his ESG score was through the roof. Investing in his ‘funds’ was a way to raise their own ESG scores.
Virtue signaling is often very expensive. Ask those Sanctuary City mayors
Same book, different cover.
The last chapter will read the same.
Rebranding? You can’t polish a turd.