What is ESG

[FlirtLife]

It’s a hard one as the companies that tend to go woke are the really deeply established players. You don’t find smaller players doing it because they can’t afford to.

that’s why they were deep in Twitter, and Facebook and Apple. These are essentially monopolies. These are the companies they go for. My last outfit was very well entrenched. In fact - myself and the “old guard” (mostly white males) built a book of about £50BN over about 16 years. It was really hard and painful work. Once we did all that work, they took a load of nobodies out of admin, who were exclusively minorities or women, and had us “mentor” them (our eventual replacements). The one I was mentoring was a black lady in her 50s. She was really nice but never did anywhere near my level of work. Get this - after a few weeks they kicked ME off the mentoring programme because a woman came forward who wanted to mentor and because I was male I wasn’t “the right fit for the candidate”. So even when I tried to play the game to help them I was unceremoniously told I wasn’t wanted.

These new folks are cheaper than me. That’s why they want them. We did our bit - build the book. Now they want cheap workers to service what we did and to boot there’s woke kudos points.

this is ESG right here. It was exactly like being in Deep South 50s US but roles reversed.

thankfully the company I now work for has a range of workers from different background (I mean that - we have a mix of everyone) but it’s all about merit.

Just keep fighting. As soon as this happened I immediately went job searching, left and told them why. I’m now writing most of my business back and in my opposite corner is a very poorly qualified person.

The people bringing this forward are mostly white guys scoring points

Oh, not much you can do when comparable companies adopt ESG around the same time. And for the near monopolies, there aren't any comparable companies in their industry.

Isn't it interesting they target first and second line managers? Of the FTSE 350, 94% of CEOs are male (U.S. is similar - I seem to recall you're in the UK). So the most severe diversification problem could be fixed if these CEOs would resign to improve diversification. I have an educated guess how many did this ...

On the environmental part of ESG, I recall Exxon lost board seats to an activist hedge fund. This wasn't "ESG" from the government, but rather a group using cash to buy Exxon shares and get their suggestions heard. Somehow they influenced enogh institutional investors to flip a few board seats. I don't know how that played out.

Exxon loses board seats to activist hedge fund in landmark climate vote

A tiny hedge fund dealt a major blow to Exxon Mobil Corp on Wednesday, unseating at least two board members in a bid to force the company's leadership to reckon with the risk of failing to adjust its business strategy to match global efforts to combat climate change.

www.reuters.com

 

[FlirtLife]

True, ESG-type investment strategies have existed for a long time without the ESG label. For example lots of universities and nonprofits have always had very strict social impact policies on what types of assets their endowments/trusts can invest in. These investors speak with their dollars, which is the way it ought to be.

The first mention of ESG occurs in 2004 on the following timeline.

Timeline and History of ESG Investing, Rules and Practices

Learn about ESG history and key events, trends and actions that have shaped environmental, social and governance strategies for businesses and investors.

www.techtarget.com

Agreed that voting with people's investment or buying choices is the way ESG should get decided. But what happens when a near monopoly like Facebook makes a decision to pursue ESG? There's no competing product - there's social media, or nothing.

 

[EyeBRollin]

The interests of governments are not the interests of the people. I’ll cite a question here to illustrate;

Maybe not in your country. Democratic societies beg to differ.

 

[BillyPilgrim]

Maybe not in your country. Democratic societies beg to differ.

Let us know when you see one