“Even as billions of dollars diverts toward firms scoring higher on environmental, social and governance measures, the funding costs for bad actors has hardly budged, a study has found.” [COMMENTARY]The better way according to this study is for asset owners to directly engage with the companies.Dumping stocks to punish bad corporate behavior has tiny impact,…

“The world’s largest asset manager revealed on Thursday that from next year, some institutional clients will be able to play a bigger role in shareholder votes. The move will apply to about 40% of $4.8 trillion in index equity assets that BlackRock manages.” [COMMENTARY]This freedom is long overdue. Each institutional client needs to decide what…

“Just as bondholders engage around fiscal and monetary policies, they should broaden conversations around ESG topics.” [COMMENTARY]This article has great information on how ESG impacts stock, corporate and sovereign bond prices and other related data.Sovereign bonds are not exempt from ESG consideration, by Carmen Nuzzo, October 6, 2021, ETFStream.com, UK.

“In May of this year, climate change litigation made global headlines in the wake of an unprecedented judgment issued by the Hague District Court in the case ofMilieudefensie v Shell. The court ordered Shell to enhance the ambition of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts, requiring the company to set — and meet — companywide…

“Academic endowments are entering a new normal after the richest school in the worldfollowed the leadof other colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuels. Now a cascade of similar announcements has followed, withBoston University, theUniversity of Minnesotaand the $8 billionMacArthur Foundationpulling the plug on fossil fuels.” [COMMENTARY]Most of their faculty is in some way…

“Likewise, according to a 2016 study from Barclays, a divergence in priority appears between some asset managers and their clients regarding the relative importance of the three ESG components. Clients regard environmental factors as the most important, while governance is top of the list for bond managers. Moreover, the same study showed that bonds with…