DEI and ESG Live On, We Just Won't Talk About Them (BLK)
That's one lesson from BlackRock's purchase of Global Infrastructure Partners.
I have to stop doing these throwaway comments and start fluffing things up into 200 page books.
Or not.
Our readers are busy and have to wade through enough crap with my tangential rambles without being faced with additional padding. So, no change.
From Yahoo Finance, February 5:
Midway through another earnings season, the free-fall in C-suite mentions of the movement for environment, social, and governance (ESG) strategies is on pace to plumb new depths.
There have been just nine direct mentions among S&P 500 companies of the politically controversial term amid the sea of hundreds of earnings calls in recent weeks, according to data from financial data company FactSet through Friday afternoon.
That is a far cry from the 156 mentions among S&P 500 companies during the fourth quarter of 2021, when usage of the term peaked according to the company.
And citations this year are either very brief or reflect a more charged political landscape, according to a Yahoo Finance analysis.
"Clients are taking a more measured approach to how they integrate ESG," noted Andy Wiechmann, the chief financial officer of finance company MSCI (MSCI) on his company's earnings call, in just one example.
The term has come up in a handful of other places, including on recent calls for stock market index operator NASDAQ (NDAQ), drug wholesaler Cencora (COR), and elevator maker Otis Worldwide (OTIS). But nearly all household names have moved away from the term entirely.
That doesn't mean that a conversation around the issues underlying ESG has been absent. Through the use of different buzzwords — or simply a straight-ahead discussion of how companies factor climate change into business decisions — the topic appears to be alive and well.
New terms like 'green economy' and 'energy transition'
Recent earnings from some of the top companies on Wall Street are perhaps the best example of the divergent trends.While no major bank brought up ESG directly, according to FactSet, climate and other issues remained a topic of much interest.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon made sure his investors were aware of "an ongoing need for increased spending due to the green economy," adding that climate change was one of a few "significant and somewhat unprecedented forces [that] cause us to remain cautious."....
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