(New York)

In an eye-opening “expose” type article, for CIO of Blackrock’s ESG division went on the record saying that ESG was largely just hype and had little substance behind it. According to former CIO Tariq Fancy, “In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community”. The comments ran in USA Today on March 16th.

FINSUM: The reality is a little more complicated. ESG does suffer from a great deal of greenwashing, and firms—at first—did little to genuinely integrate ESG into their decision-making. Over time, they have taken greater account of real ESG factors in investment selection, but at the same time much of what constitutes “ESG” and “green investment” is muddled and unclear. There is a reporting issue that the whole industry suffers from—there is not enough data to separate good from bad companies—and thus much of the investment selection gets generalized according to industries (e.g. tech is good, energy is bad), which is so broad as to be almost useless.