Displaying items by tag: ESG risk

Europe has been the dominant authority in shaping ESG guidelines around the globe, however, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is bringing weapons to the forefront of ESG labeling. The bloc is redefining its ESG rules and the no-brainers include rules on gender pay equity, humane supply chains, and banning cigarettes and goods produced from forced labor. While there is hot debate on weapons German defense lobby group BDSV is pushing hard for the case as to why weapons are part of ESG. They are making the case that a strong defense is critical to the governance component of ESG. There is a willingness to hear these arguments by ESG labelers and it is being put under fair consideration.

FINSUM: Euro area defense companies have had a huge boost in the last couple of weeks and securing ESG financing could be pivotal to their future.

(New York)

Any advisor likely already knows it, but it is worth repeating: ESG funds are troubling space. They are significantly more costly than traditional funds, have middling returns, and perhaps worst of all, these days they seem quite undifferentiated from conventional funds. One of the big problems in the space is that there is no universal definition of ESG or standard convention for defining ESG risks or parameters, so anyone can call anything “ESG”. For example, take a look at the top ten holdings of two funds, one a basic S&P 500 tracker, the other labeled “Large Cap ESG”, and you will see they have virtually no differences except that the ESG fund costs 40 bp at best and the conventional fund costs 9 bp.

FINSUM: Some people call ESG a pure marketing scam. To some extent that is true as it is pretty easy for fund providers to take advantage of ESG pricing without really doing anything under the hood. But at the same time, there is also genuine interest on the consumer and provider sides to expand opportunities in the space.