States send letters and questionnaires inquiring about ESG at firms (2023)
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Twenty-one state financial officers signed letters on May 15 that were sent to large asset management firms and two proxy advisory services (Glass-Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, who combined represent 95% of the proxy advisory business), requesting answers to questions about the use of ESG and the justification for doing so as legal fiduciaries of their clients’ money:
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The letter expressed the state financial officers’ concern over the asset management and proxy advisory firms’ approach to how they are advising their clients to vote in shareholder proposals. Which in many cases appear to be unrelated to companies’ core business and have, in many cases, appeared to have been to advance the radical left-wing agenda — such as environment, social, and governance (ESG)…. [T]he letters included a questionnaire for the firms to answer and in turn, detail how they determine which shareholder proposals to support and how the firms analyze their proposal’s impact before deciding which one to go with. Nebraska state Treasurer John Murante, a former national chair of the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), told Breitbart News, “For too long, the ESG agenda has plowed forward at the behest of large investment managers like BlackRock.” “Together, they’ve [the firms] steered votes on issues ancillary or even detrimental to companies’ core business,” Murante added. “With these letters, we hope to expose the scam that is crushing shareholder value, all in the name of an extreme, progressive agenda.” The list of asset managers firms and proxy advisory firms who received the letter were: BlackRock, Vanguard Group, Fidelity Investments, UBS Group, State Street Global Advisors, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Credit Agricole, Allianz Group, Capital Group, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, Amundi, PIMCO, Legal & General, Edward Jones, Prudential Financial, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Invesco Ltd, Glass Lewis, and ISS. The 21 state financial officers who signed the letter were Alaska Commissioner of Revenue Adam Crum, Arizona state Treasurer Kimberly Yee, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, Idaho state Treasurer Julie Ellsworth, Indiana state Treasurer Dan Elliot, Iowa state Treasurer Roby Smith, Kansas state Treasurer Steven Johnson, Louisiana state Treasurer John Schroder, Mississippi state Treasurer David McRae, Missouri state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, Missouri state Treasurer Vivek Malek, Nebraska state Treasurer John Murante, Nebraska Auditor Mike Foley, North Carolina state Treasurer Dale Folwell, North Dakota state Treasurer Thomas Beadle, Oklahoma Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd, Oklahoma state Treasurer Todd Russ, South Carolina state Treasurer Curtis M. Loftis, Jr., Utah state Treasurer Marlo Oaks, West Virginia state Treasurer Riley Moore, and Wyoming state Treasurer Curt Meier. Ohio state Treasurer Robert Sprague signed on to the proxy vote advisory firm letters.[1] |
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See also
- Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)
- Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's ESG newsletter
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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