Anti-ESG
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US boards answer to all shareholders, not just the loudest ones
There is a growing habit – mostly American, often loud – of treating ESG as a single cultural package: climate, DEI and whatever social flashpoint dominates the cycle. It makes for sharp copy. It is also a category error in the markets where stewardship decisions are actually made. In the UK and EU, ESG is regulated process: rules, disclosures and supervisory expectations designed to surface financially material sustainability risks. Think less ‘cause’, more ‘cash flow’. Across the UK and Europe, faith-based investing has long been expressed through formal, responsible-investment practice rather than culture-war branding. Since the 18th century, Church and…
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‘You sit down with tax collectors and prostitutes’: How Bowyer Research is reshaping proxy voting on the right
Bowyer Research first came to the attention of IR Impact – and many on the mainstream governance scene – when the firm’s ESG-skeptic voting policies were picked up by ISS. Today, those policies are available through all the major proxy voting advisory firms and Bowyer Research, which is essentially a mom-and-pop (plus kids) shop run out of Pennsylvania, advises many millions of dollars, including the $57 bn Texas Permanent School Fund. Jerry Bowyer, co-founded Bowyer Research with Susan, his wife of 31 years, , feels the right is playing catch up when it comes to equities and proxy voting –…
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Talking DEI under Trump 2.0: how anti-woke investors are hijacking pro-ESG proposals
What does DEI mean to you? Here at IR Impact, we’ve stopped spelling out diversity, equity and inclusion, working under the assumption that this most tricky of news items is known to all. But it seems that other interpretations exist – on the White House official X account for example, where a post was recently put out stating ‘the only DEI we support is Deport Every Illegal’. That very much sums up the kind of narrative companies are up against with today’s very public broadly anti-ESG and specifically anti-DEI rhetoric.
