ESG Under Fire in US State Capitols

(Outlet: Financial Times)
This past weekend we read with interest The Economist’s deep dive into environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. The central argument is that ESG “is deeply flawed”; that it is riddled with greenwashing and has become “an unholy mess that needs to be ruthlessly streamlined”.

Those who have been around this space for a while know there is a good bit of it that is indeed in need of a good pruning. But one of the central issues with ESG is that it means different things to different people. Some consider it to be the work of the nuns and other activists who file shareholder proposals to agitate for corporate change. Others see ESG as a “big data” project for investors desperately seeking more information about their holdings — a trend that is here to stay, whatever happens to this acronym.