Biden issues first veto, knocks Marjorie Taylor Greene – POLITICO

A he promised, President Biden has issued the first veto of his Presidency, overruling Congress’ attempt to block the DOL/EBSA ESG rule. President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed his first bill, blocking the repeal of a Labor Department rule that permitted retirement investing tied to environmental and social goals. The veto was expected, after the…

DOL/EBSA ESG Rules Challenged in Court

The new DOL/EBSA rules allowing ESG investments and reiterating the fiduciary obligation of exercising share ownership rights, including proxy voting, is being challenged in court by 25 Republican Attorneys General and fossil fuel companies. The rule was set to take effect January 30, 2023. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of…

HUGE Win for ESG! DOL Will Not Enforce the Odious, Dark Money Promoted ESG Rule

Department of Labor statement: On November 13, 2020, the Department of Labor (Department) published a final rule on “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments,” 85 Fed. Reg. 72846 (November 13, 2020), which adopted amendments to the “Investment Duties” regulation under Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The amendments generally…

VEA Comment to DOL/EBSA on Proxy Voting

October 2, 2020 Jeanne Klinefelter Wilson Acting Assistant Secretary Employee Benefits Security Administration United States Department of Labor 200 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20210 RE: RIN 1210-AB91 Dear Acting Assistant Secretary Wilson, In the long, dismaying history of regulatory capture, when agencies set up to provide oversight instead issue rules entrenching and subsidizing corporate insiders,…

Kurt Schacht: The Labor Department Is Tearing Down a Landmark of Investor Protection

Kurt N. Schacht, head of policy for the CFA Institute and former chair of the SEC Investor Advisory Committee. writes in Barron’s: Corporate governance and shareholder rights have seldom witnessed an assault on investor protection like the current federal government’s onslaught. Whether weakened rules on broker accountability, rules designed to eliminate shareholder proposals, or those…

DOL proposes rule to narrow scope of ERISA fiduciaries’ proxy voting

DOL/EBSA has followed up its outrageously unsupportable proposed rule on ESG investing (more than 95 percent of the more than 7000 comments strongly opposed) with an even more outrageously unsupportable proposed rule rolling back more than 30 years of settled law that all aspects of share ownership — the right to trade, to sue, and…