Squabble between US conservatives and liberals over ESG won’t derail global trend towards more reporting, CFA Institute head says
- A handful of US states are very much against sustainability and ESG disclosures, but the bigger picture shows more disclosures and that more resources are being put into a green-energy agenda, CFA Institute’s Paul Andrews tells the Post
- Investment managers’ focus has already moved beyond the politics of ESG investing and companies’ ESG scores, JPMorgan Asset Management executive says
“Right now there is a lot of noise in the US, because you have not only the federal government, but the 50 states also have a lot of say on disclosures by companies that do business in those states,” Paul Andrews, the Washington DC-based managing director for research, advocacy and standards at global investment professionals body CFA Institute, told the Post.
“There are a handful of states that are very much against disclosures on sustainability and ESG,” Andrews said. “That to me is a lot of [noise]. But if you look at the bigger picture … it is clear … [there are] more disclosures and more resources are being put into a green-energy agenda.”
Several cases have shown that pension funds of states that prohibit consideration of ESG or sustainability issues have underperformed those that did, said Andrews, a former secretary general of the International Organization of Securities Commissions.
In the US, Republican-led states on Thursday vowed to appeal a federal judge’s decision to reject their court challenge to a Biden administration rule allowing pension plans of more than 150 million people to consider ESG issues in investment decisions.
The rule adopted last year reversed a 2020 rule initiated by the administration of former president, Donald Trump, that hindered ESG investing by retirement plans.
