sen. whitehouse: prove your ‘corporate political footprint

December 5, 2022

(GreenBiz) It’s not enough for companies to report about their financial activities and liabilities as required by law, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Nor is it enough for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to demand, as expected soon, that businesses report about climate liabilities as well. Read more here.

esg: it’s not ideology, it’s economics

December 5, 2022

(Forbes) A recent New York Times story looked at some of the new course offerings and concentrations at Harvard, Yale, and Wharton business schools, noting that they’re “stepping into the political arena.” The schools simply say curricula focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion and in environmental, social and governance factors are a response to shifting…

Investors launch new initiative to target the ‘S’ in ESG

December 2, 2022

(Financial Times) As the clean energy industry takes off – ushering in a new boom for the mining sector that serves it – it’s vital that human rights are not sidelined in the push for low-carbon power. That’s the logic behind a new collaborative initiative announced yesterday at the annual Principles for Responsible Investment conference.…

The Failure of the DEI-Industrial Complex

December 1, 2022

(Harvard Business Review) There’s a big, poorly kept secret in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry: the actual efficacy of an uncomfortably large proportion of our “flagship” services, talking points, and interventions — unconscious bias training, racial sensitivity workshops, the “business case for diversity,” resume anonymization, and the like — is lower than many…

Doesn’t anyone do due diligence any more?

November 29, 2022

(Financial Times) It’s been a lousy month for the reputation of professional investing. The collapse of FTX revealed that everyone from racy hedge funds to staid pension and sovereign wealth funds had been throwing money at a cryptocurrency exchange with weaker financial controls than Enron. Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for…

Federal Judge Orders Amazon to Stop Firing People for Organizing

November 21, 2022

(Vice) The order was a response to a petition filed by Gerald Bryson, a former Amazon employee who in 2020 was fired for protesting the company’s lack of safety protocols regarding COVID-19. Bryson worked at JFK8, the company’s Staten Island warehouse which has since become famous as the first Amazon facility to successfully unionize, earlier…

Junk Carbon Offsets Are What Make These Big Companies ‘Carbon Neutral’

November 20, 2022

(Bloomberg) For more than a decade, Credit Suisse Group AG has claimed to be “carbon neutral” in its operations. Every gleaming office tower, every flight by an executive — all the emissions generated directly by a global banking giant are supposedly counterbalanced. A closer look at the Swiss bank’s sustainability reports tells a different story:…

FTX Offers a Master Class in Crypto’s Flaws

November 17, 2022

(Bloomberg) In one sense, investors and regulators should be grateful to Sam Bankman-Fried, the erstwhile head of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. The spectacular flameout of his virtual empire has evolved from a cautionary tale into a master class on everything that’s wrong with crypto markets. As customers and creditors sort through what remains of the…

SEC Levied Record Enforcement Penalties for Misconduct in 2022

November 15, 2022

(Bloomberg) The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement penalties surged to a record in the government’s fiscal 2022, the agency said on Tuesday. The SEC’s enforcement actions resulted in $6.4 billion in fines and money ordered to be reimbursed to investors, up from just $3.9 billion in 2021, according to an annual report. “We don’t expect…

Startups Need an ESG Strategy

November 14, 2022

(Harvard Business Review) Over the last five years, the corporate world has focused increasingly on implementing stakeholder capitalism through Environmental, Social and Governance principles (ESG). However, is ESG a distraction to cash-strapped talent and time constrained startups? Should founders build their business first and worry about ESG later? Quite the contrary: start-ups have an advantage over larger companies whose “installed base” of assets,…