Commentary
Note: This is the third of a three part series on ESG—environmental, social, and governance—investing.  Two previous columns addressed the environmental and social elements of ESG investing. Here, we discusses the last element, corporate governance.
In this third discussion of ESG investing, we see how governance—as with “social”—arises not from what it was intended to be but from what it has been debased to become by progressive activists who manage investments for municipal pension funds, some Wall Street fund managers, and in the firms that market this otherwise benign—and common sense —investment strategy.
Readers will remember in our discussion of social investing that we discussed how the “S” investment standard promulgated by S&P Global and the Boston Consulting Group operated with “a closer nexus to bottom-line financial results, to advise … clients about social investing risks,” to address issues such as “labor relations, supply chain vulnerabilities, and political as well as geopolitical matters in key markets and in jurisdictions where suppliers are located.”…