Ah, I see how it applies. It does make me wonder why non-esg large fund investors wouldn't care about this type of control as well?
I also think there's some inherent conflict in the S part of ESG investing. i.e. a truly socially responsible company would be returning most of its earning to the workers who actually did the work that earned that money, rather than funneling it to shareholders. Which makes those companies a bad investment, which means ESG funds that extended their S goals that far will fail and ESG funds that don't will get good returns for their investors and continue on - so by definition the S goal is limited.
> It does make me wonder why non-esg large fund investors wouldn't care about this type of control as well?
The main thing investors have been focused on in the last 30 to 40 years has been lowering fees, in particular "passive" investing which is based on very obvious metrics ahead-of-time.
"Active" investors may have cared about these governance issues before, but their fees were just too high in practice. But I think we're seeing the blowback now as more-and-more companies come out with crap governance structures, knowing that they can take advantage of the easy-money from passive investors.
I don't know if things will swing the other way. But ESG seems like a way to keep fees low but still have a degree of thought put into corporate politics.
I'm not "bullish" on ESG btw. But I think its a step in the right direction, and I think that its a good thing that people are thinking about how to solve the issues that arose from this era of passive investing. Whether or not ESG truly solves the problem remains to be seen however.
I also think there's some inherent conflict in the S part of ESG investing. i.e. a truly socially responsible company would be returning most of its earning to the workers who actually did the work that earned that money, rather than funneling it to shareholders. Which makes those companies a bad investment, which means ESG funds that extended their S goals that far will fail and ESG funds that don't will get good returns for their investors and continue on - so by definition the S goal is limited.