Fortune has a terrific piece by Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian on the failure (in the purely financial sense) of the anti-woke, anti-ESG companies. It is well worth a careful read of the entire piece, but here are some highlights: Grandstanding political ideologues are using opportunistic attacks on iconic U.S. enterprises to showcase their…
Tag: anti-esg
Douglas Chia on ESG and Anti-ESG
Douglas Chia is one of the most respected authorities on corporate governance and we are honored to be able to share his recent speech, the most insightful discussion we have seen of the challenges to ESG.. Anti-ESG: A War On Two Fronts By Douglas K. Chia, President, Soundboard Governance LLC; Senior Fellow, Rutgers Center for…
WSJ is Shocked, Shocked! To Find Capitalism Happening
Entities that love to rhapsodize about the purity of the free market are often aghast when markets deliver a response they don’t like. Here we have the Wall Street Journal displaying its bias with the slanted language in the headline for this story: “Shareholder Activists Drag Companies Into U.S. Culture Wars.” Let us point out…
Another Useless Letter from State GOP Politicians
Following on the wildly distorted, inaccurate attack on ESG in a letter from Republican Attorneys General to Larry Fink at Blackrock (our suggested response is here, Fink’s actual response is here, and the rebuttal from the Democratic Attorneys General is here), we now have a letter from Republican state treasurers that is just as slanted…
We Give an F to The WSJ’s Grades for “Woke” Proxy Votes
The Wall Street Journal’s hysterical pearl-clutching about ESG is getting to the point of derangement. The one thing we thought we could count on them for was, well, counting, but real math would not make their point, so they’re touting a disgracefully skewed report. The bias is evident in the Journal’s language. “Strangling” fossil fuels?…
When DeSantis Says “Anti-Woke” He Means “Diverting Pension Funds to Lower-Returns Donors”
Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has been crusading against “woke” investments for allegedly threatening his state employees’ retirement funds. But the most imminent threat to Florida public employees’ retirement dollars appears to be the massive state pension investments that have gone to some of the Republican Party’s Wall Street donors under DeSantis’…
Another Opposite-Day Shareholder Proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research
The ultra-right National Center for Public Policy Research, funded by The Coors Foundation, Exxon Mobil, the “ATM for the fr right” Donors Trust, and, in the past, contributions from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has submitted an anti-diversity shareholder proposal at Paypal. This is the group that led a law suit against Starbucks Corporation for implementing…
An Unusual Solicitation AGAINST a Shareholder Proposal
The ultra-right, climate change denying National Legal and Policy Center (once again, the blander the name, the more they are trying to hide who they are) is now circulating a “proxy memorandum” (not a solicitation” urging shareholders of JP Morgan to vote against a “Fossil Fuel Phase-Out shareholder proposal sponsored by The Sierra Club Foundation….
“Trainwrecks of Thought” — Economists Should Stop Opining On ESG And How Businesses Should Run by Erik Sherman for Forbes
Erik Sherman’s definitive takedown of the dreadful WSJ op-ed on ESG and the movie “Air,” quoting VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow: Boudreaux and Henderson expand that to include environmental considerations and—this is an immense headscratcher—apparently corporate governance as well. That last in the trio is critical to a strong investment culture and adequate protection of…
George Mason Professors: Wrong about ESG, Wrong About Movies, Cagey about Incentives
From VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow: As an expert in both movies and corporate governance, I can confirm that an op-ed in the WSJ by George Mason and Stanford Hoover Institution economics professors is the most idiotic take on both in a long time. The professors argue that the new Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie “Air,”…
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