Ballotpedia staff

Economy and Society is Ballotpedia’s weekly review of the developments in corporate activism; corporate political engagement; and the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) trends and events that characterize the growing intersection between business and politics.

ESG Developments This Week

Lawsuit challenges California’s board diversity mandate  

On November 29, the Free Enterprise Project, a program of the National Center for Public Policy Research that aims to keep politics out of capital markets, announced that it had joined a federal lawsuit filed against the state of California over the state’s new business diversity rules. A 2020 California law requires corporate boards of publicly held companies based in the state to have a minimum number of members from what it calls underrepresented communities. The National Center, which is represented in this case by the Pacific Legal Foundation, is suing to have the law struck down as unconstitutional. According to a press release from FEP: 

“All racism is racism. All discrimination is discrimination. Each American should be judged according to his unique merits and the content of his character,” said Scott Shepard, director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP). “Doing anything else is unconstitutional, immoral and divisive. Californians deserve better than legally-mandated New Racism, especially if it is promoted under the Orwellian guise of ‘antiracism.’” 

The lawsuit, National Center for Public Policy Research v. Weber, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on November 22. It seeks to overturn a state law passed in 2020 (AB 979) that amended California’s Corporations Code. The law requires that corporate boards of publicly held companies based in the state have a minimum number of members from “underrepresented communities,” defined as people of certain favored races or sexual orientations. It follows legislation passed in 2018 (SB 826) similarly requiring boards to have a minimum number of women.

“California’s quota doesn’t remedy discrimination, it perpetuates it,” said Anastasia Boden, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “This law forces shareholders to cast votes based on immutable characteristics that people were born into and cannot change. The government should treat people as individuals, not based on immutable characteristics.”… 

“California’s political class has proven inept at running the state. Now they are heaping their unconstitutional ineptitude on the business community,” added National Center Executive Vice President Justin Danhof, Esq. “It may seem like a novel concept in 2021, but board members ought to be appointed for business purposes to help companies thrive. Selecting boards based on what someone looks like and who they prefer as sexual partners is not in the best interest of the shareholders of any company.” 

This suit follows a similar one brought recently against Nasdaq, which threatened corporations with de-listing from the exchange if they fail to meet certain board diversity demands. The National Center and its Free Enterprise Project are also involved in that effort, having filed suit against the SEC this past October: 

“In a similar ongoing case, FEP is seeking to strike down a quota rule recently implemented by the Nasdaq corporation and approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Nasdaq now requires companies listed on its stock exchange to either establish board quotas on the basis of race, sex and sexual orientation or explain why they have not done so. In the suit, FEP – represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance – argues that the SEC lacks authority to approve the rule, and that Nasdaq lacks the authority to promulgate it.”

Congressman pushes for mandatory disclosures

On December 9, Congressman Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) participated in an online ESG forum hosted by The Hill. Among other things, Vargas reiterated his desire to see the passage of legislation designed to force companies to disclose ESG-related information as part of their annual disclosure process. While the SEC has signaled its interest in creating and implementing mandatory disclosure standards, opponents have questioned whether the agency has the authority to do so. Legislation such as that proposed by Vargas would remove one roadblock from the SEC’s plans: “Vargas said the SEC would determine the exact metrics to track under the bill.” The Hill has the full story:

“Vargas, speaking at The Hill’s The ESG Ecosystem event, said most large companies are reporting some of such metrics, but he expressed concern that the disclosures are selective without industry-wide reporting requirements.

“Let’s do it in an objective way, let’s look at everything,” Vargas told The Hill’s Steve Clemons. “The good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Vargas introduced the ESG Disclosure Simplification Act in February to mandate companies report ESG information to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The bill passed the House with razor-thin margins in June, with all Republicans and four Democrats voting against the measure. 

“There’s a lot of Senate allies looking at this, and ultimately, I don’t know,” Vargas said of the bill’s fate.”

Exxon-Mobil faces new wave of ESG activism 

Last spring, Engine No. 1, a small hedge fund, challenged the managers and directors of Exxon-Mobil claiming that the company’s leaders were not doing enough to battle climate change. The hedge fund sought to replace three of Exxon’s directors with its own, more environmentally friendly candidates. With the support of the Big Three passive asset management firms—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street—Engine No. 1’s challenge was successful, and all three of its candidates were elected to the Exxon board.

And yet, the company is still not environmentally friendly enough for green and ESG activists, at least according to David Blackmon, writing at Forbes:

“Providing further proof – as if any were needed – that ESG investor groups can never be satisfied, ExxonMobil finds itself under renewed attack from activists for not doing enough even though it is on target to meet the 2025 goals it was previously pressured by the same activists to adopt.

A group calling itself the Coalition for a Responsible Exxon, or “CURE” (no idea where the “U” is derived) is angry that Exxon, while doing what it needs to do to meet its overall goals, including $15 billion in planned investments in green energy initiatives, failed this year to to set “segment-specific reduction targets for Exxon’s midstream and downstream businesses.” For that ostensible “failure,” CURE awards the company’s new board of directors – which includes activist members sponsored by fellow ESG activist group Engine No. 1 – a grade of D-minus for the year, and calls for the firing of CEO Darren Woods despite the company’s stellar financial performance in 2021….

CURE’s announcement came days after Exxon itself announced that its Esso Petroleum Company subsidiary had entered into a memo of understanding (MOU) with SGN and Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG) to “to explore the use of hydrogen and carbon capture to help reduce emissions in the Southampton industrial cluster.” A release by the three prospective partners estimates that the potential annual demand for hydrogen from the cluster could be as much as 37 TWh by 2050, enough to meet the heating demand of 800,000 homes in Southern England. The Southampton cluster is home to Exxon’s Fawley Complex, the largest refining/petrochemical complex in the UK.

Joe Blommaert, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions said: “Hydrogen has the potential to help provide customers with access to affordable, reliable energy while minimizing emissions. We are pleased to be part of this collaboration that includes a technical study to assess the potential for the Fawley facility to play a key role in both hydrogen production and carbon capture and storage solutions. With well-designed policy and regulations, hydrogen can help reduce the emissions of the Southampton industrial area that provides vital products for modern life.””

Blackmon continues, noting Exxon’s recent history of activism to fight climate change through various programs—mostly carbon capture efforts—before finally concluding that, in his view, it might never be enough for the activists:

“Exxon is already the largest capturer of carbon dioxide in earth, but the one thing we know beyond any doubt is that, no matter how many future projects it announces and executes, and no matter how many annual or decadal goals for emissions targets it meets, it will never be enough for activist groups like CURE. These announcements and achievements will always be met with new and expanded demands, bad grades for the board of directors and renewed calls for the firing of whomever happens to be serving as CEO at any given time.

It has all become so very tiresome and predictable.”

ESG: no better, but no worse?

A study recently conducted by researchers at Arizona State University purports to show that ESG investing doesn’t cost investors anything—or at least not very much. This marks a shift in the debate over ESG’s impact on investors. For years, ESG advocates have insisted that ESG can and will produce greater returns than other investment schemes. This report challenges that assumption and flips it on its head, making the case, instead, that ESG doesn’t cost investors very much. According to Institutional Investor magazine:

“Environmental, social, and governance investing poses little cost to investors, according to a study from researchers at Arizona State University.

In a paper titled “The Cost of ESG Investing,” ASU finance professors Laura Lindsey, Seth Pruitt, and Christoph Schiller found that even as interest in ESG mandates grows, ESG strategies have little to no impact on investment returns. 

In the paper’s main analysis, the trio constructed a portfolio that generated an annualized average return of 14.6 percent. When they implemented an ESG screen, meaning they removed stocks with “bad” (or lower than median) ESG scores and created an ESG-tilted portfolio, the annualized average rate of return fell to 12.5 percent. 

“It’s not statistically significant,” Pruitt told Institutional Investor. 

ESG screening also had little effect on the sample portfolio’s Sharpe ratio, a metric that helps investors understand an investment’s return relative to its risk. Before the ESG screening, the portfolio’s annualized Sharpe ratio was 1.46. After bad ESG stocks are removed in the screening process, the Sharpe ratio landed at 1.52. 

“The ESG-tilted portfolio is not doing significantly worse than the original portfolio, and that tells us that the cost of ESG investing is small,” Pruitt said. In this case, Pruitt said, cost means investors’ sacrifice of returns or Sharpe ratio in favor of ESG investing. 

“You don’t lose by implementing ESG,” he said.”

In the spotlight

Best Books of 2021

In its end-of-the-year roundup of the “Best Books of 2021,” The Wall Street Journal identified The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, an explicitly anti-ESG analysis by Stephen R. Soukup, as one of its Top-5 books in politics. In his summary of the book, the Journal’s Barton Swaim wrote the following:

“A great many Americans over the past several years have realized to their horror that American corporations are no longer, if they ever were, the broadly conservative and patriotic institutions of midcentury yore. Their managers are terrified of criticism by activist investors, and they often appear more solicitous of transnational NGOs than of their own investors. How did it happen? Stephen R. Soukup answers the question in “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital.” The book is a touch overwritten—Mr. Soukup makes no attempt to hide his dislike for the objects of his criticism—but it is an exceptionally useful presentation of the intellectual origins and present-day lunacies of woke capitalism. The most enlightening parts of the book deal with multibillion-dollar asset-management companies such as BlackRock and State Street. The leaders of these firms embrace a variety of radical ideologies—broadly known as “sustainability” and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance)—and routinely use their massive financial leverage to push publicly traded companies to alter their policies according to progressive political ideals. These same companies, meanwhile, are happy to invest in Chinese corporations under the control of a communist government that spurns all those progressive ideals. Which raises the question: Who’s dictating to whom?”

Economy and Society is Ballotpedia’s weekly review of the developments in corporate activism; corporate political engagement; and the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) trends and events that characterize the growing intersection between business and politics.

ESG Developments This Week

In Washington, D.C., and around the world

SEC preps businesses for new ESG disclosure standards

In a speech last month, SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw provided companies under the SEC’s jurisdiction with significant insight as to what they should expect from the SEC’s proposal for new disclosure standards and how they should start planning to meet those expectations. Among other things, Commissioner Crenshaw suggested that the SEC will tacitly, if not overtly change the definition of materiality:

“In March of this year, the Commission sought public comment on climate change disclosure. We received hundreds of responses; many of which also addressed disclosures concerning other ESG risks. An overwhelming number of comment letters state that investors view ESG information as material to financial performance and that investors need consistent and reliable disclosures of ESG information to inform their investment decisions. According to commenters, ESG related information helps investors assess the long-term sustainability or value of an investment. And this makes sense if you think about the position investors are in today.”

Commissioner Crenshaw also discussed the types of issues that might confront companies and how they should work to incorporate their ESG disclosures into their financial statements and internal accounting practices:

“With ESG now front and center, the reliability of corporate ESG risk disclosures, and their potential impact on and connectivity to financial statements, is critical. As you know, corporate internal controls play a crucial role in ensuring such risk disclosures are consistent and reliable. The term “internal accounting controls” refers to an organization’s plan, methods, and procedures related to safeguarding a company’s assets and ensuring the reliability of corporate financial records. These controls broadly include systems designed to ensure transactions are authorized and recorded in a way that maintains accountability for assets and allows for financial statement preparation in conformity with GAAP. They also include procedures that control access to assets and the systems designed to test the effectiveness of internal controls. The concept of accounting controls is intentionally broad, because a company’s system for tracking its assets and recording transactions – regardless of their form – is vital to accurate financial reporting. And it is vital to identifying risks to the financial statements so leadership can manage them and prepare GAAP-compliant financial statements and disclosures accordingly. At the end of the day, management is responsible for establishing and maintaining an effective system of internal controls that reasonably safeguards corporate assets from risk. So as you think about and discuss ESG risks during this conference, I encourage you to think about them in the context of your internal accounting controls and audit functions.”

Finally, Crenshaw addressed climate change and the related matters that should draw companies’ attention:

“I would like to hear how public companies are assessing whether and how climate change risk impacts revenues and expenses, both now and in the foreseeable future. In particular, I am interested in understanding how companies are evaluating whether climate risk impacts their business. Some issues that I would think companies are considering as part of this process include whether assets are at risk of depreciating more quickly or becoming “stranded” in response to climate change; whether supply chain or transportation networks are at greater risk of being impacted by extreme weather events; or whether existing revenue streams depend on the status quo, such that new regulations pertaining to deforestation or carbon emission could potentially reduce income. No matter where public companies come out on these topics – or how they assess climate risk – I would like to understand the underlying internal accounting controls that guide decision making. On a related note, if climate change presents risks to a company, or at least requires disclosure, I’m interested in understanding how that company evaluates climate change risk. For example, do companies rely on third party service providers, and if so, do they evaluate the controls that the service providers have in place over information and disclose to investors the identity of the service provider, in the same way you disclose your auditors and underwriters?” 

ESG in theory and practice

Several weeks after COP26 summit agreements to divest from fossil fuels and push toward a zero-carbon future, Japan appears to be backtracking:

“Government officials have been quietly urging trading houses, refiners and utilities to slow down their move away from fossil fuels, and even encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to people within the Japanese government and industry, who requested anonymity as the talks are private.

The officials are concerned about the long-term supply of traditional fuels as the world doubles down on renewable energy, the people said. The import-dependent nation wants to avoid a potential shortage of fuel this winter, as well as during future cold spells, after a deficit last year sparked fears of nationwide blackouts.

Japan joined almost 200 countries last month in a pledge to step up the fight against climate change, including phasing down coal power and tackling emissions. However, the moves by the officials show the struggle to turn those pledges into reality, especially for countries like Japan which relies on imports for nearly 90% of its energy needs, with prices spiking partly because of the world’s shift away from fossil fuel investments….

To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the world needs to stop developing new gas, oil and coal fields, the International Energy Agency said in May. Japanese officials are echoing concerns highlighted by Australia last month, which said Europe’s gas supply squeeze is proof that nations need to continue to add more production.

Japan’s trading houses, including Sumitomo Corp. and Marubeni Corp., are aggressively divesting from fossil fuels amid an uncertain future for the energy sources and pressure from shareholders. These companies, formally known as “Sogo Shosha,” have traditionally been among the biggest investors in oil and natural gas assets in order to bring the fuel to resource-poor Japan.”

In the States

Report argues New York City’s ESG tax hits hardest upstate

As part of its push to move toward sustainability (and thus to meet municipal bond investors’ ESG demands), New York City has pledged to go green and recently signed two contracts to make that possible. According to a recent note from the Empire Center for Public Policy, most of the costs of the project, but none of the benefits, will hit upstate:

“A pair of recently inked contracts to fuel more than one-third of New York City’s electricity grid with renewable energy will raise monthly electricity bills for upstate ratepayers up to 9.9 percent once the projects are on-line. 

Both downstate (ConEdison) and upstate (National Grid) customers will bear the project costs equally based on load share, but upstate customers—who tend to have lower electricity bills—are expected to experience roughly double the percentage increase. 

That’s according to a petition just filed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is now seeking to have the contracted projects approved by the Public Service Commission. 

The projects seem headed for approval, since Governor Hochul signed off on them and her office issued a press release Tuesday trumpeting their expected contribution….”

The Empire State note also discussed recent refusals by the New York State Climate Action Council to be more transparent about who would pay for further plans to meet sustainability goals and how those goals would be met:

“In related news Tuesday, the New York State Climate Action Council (Council) held a virtual public meeting at which it discussed a strategy to continue dodging — in its long-awaited “draft scoping plan” to be issued later this month—the question of who will pay the hundreds of billions of dollars required to achieve the CLCPA’s climate goals. 

A draft plan circulated in advance to the Council members (but not the public) prompted member concern regarding the need for an analysis of “energy affordability and impacts to consumer pricing.” But the “proposed resolution” to that concern was to point to the Council’s cost-benefit analysis. As we recently noted, however, that analysis makes no attempt to estimate ratepayer impact on the grounds that it’s currently unclear what specific policies will be adopted to achieve the law’s climate goals.”

In the spotlight

ESG and business schools, again

This week, The Financial Times has two stories about ESG at business schools and whether the latest increase is meeting current demand. One story deals with specifically with European Business Schools and the impressions they give with respect to ESG education:

“As environmental, social and governance standards become ever more important criteria by which business schools are judged, the Financial Times’s ranking team analysed how European institutions are faring compared with their global rivals, as well as assessing how students are funding their degrees, alumni seniority and favoured sectors of employment….

Executive MBA and MiM graduates who studied outside Europe rate their business schools’ delivery of environmental, social and governance topics more highly than those from European institutions. Only MBA graduates from European schools rate them higher on the subject than their peers elsewhere.

MBA and executive MBA programmes taught in Europe dedicate a larger part of their courses to ESG compared with schools in the rest of the world. The average proportion of core MBA teaching hours dedicated to ESG in Europe is 75 per cent higher than the rest of the world, where only 12 per cent of the degree is related to ESG topics.”

The second piece made the case that in spite of European business schools’ dedication to ESG education, they are still failing the business community, which needs even more ESG capacity:

“Business is undergoing profound change. Urged on by regulatory reforms proposed by the European Commission, the continent’s executives are at the forefront of promoting purposeful, responsible and sustainable business. European business schools should be at the vanguard but risk being left behind.

Many schools have been slow to recognise the extent of reform required to their curricula. They have introduced electives on topics such as environmental, social and corporate governance and sustainable business but, for the most part, their core courses remain unchanged.

The recent final report from The British Academy Future of the Corporation programme highlights the extent to which business is embracing purposeful profit — making money by solving rather than exacerbating problems for people and planet. It argues that businesses should be supported and held to account, and sets out policies and practices.

Business school research and teaching should be the source of education for the coming generation of managers and entrepreneurs. But shareholder primacy remains at the heart of schools’ programmes, which are focused on economic theories, financial models and management studies. Courses start from the presumption that the purpose of a business is to maximise shareholder wealth and everything — accounting, finance, marketing, operations management, organisational behaviour and strategy — follows from that.”