Wall Street is no stranger to culture wars, dating to William Jennings Bryan and the 19th-century free silver movement. Today’s version: The push by conservative states to make state pension funds stop doing business with money managers who use their power to press companies to cut carbon emissions.There’s a list of reasons to suspect the pushback won’t much affect the movement toward investing that factors in environmental, social and corporate governance goals alongside shorter-term financial performance.First, the blowback to ESG is confined to a few states so far, with Republican politicians in other states raising issues but taking only limited action. Even where states have acted, the steps seem likely to have little impact on investment firms that consider ESG in choosing stocks – which is nearly all major asset managers. And politicians are preparing for an assault on ESG based on antitrust claims – but institutional investors have framed their strategies to steer clear of legal theories Republican state attorneys general are pursuing, legal experts say.”It’s not only vaporware, it’s ridiculous vaporware,” said David Nadig, an expert on exchange-traded funds and financial futurist at VettaFi, which owns ETFDatabase.com. Vaporware is software-industry slang for products that are announced but never reach store shelves. “They say they’re b …
Why the ESG vs. GOP war over energy and climate change is going nowhere – CNBC
