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.
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