CONTRIBUTOR
Several of the largest asset managers in the U.S. are withdrawing from a major coalition of companies focused on advancing green investment strategies and climate-sensitive corporate management.
JPMorgan Asset Management (JMAM) and State Street Global Advisors will not be renewing membership in Climate Action 100+, a coalition of investors and asset managers with a combined $68 trillion under management that pushes corporations to reduce emissions and adopt climate risk disclosure practices, according to Financial Times. Climate Action 100+ and Ceres — a green shareholder activist group that co-founded the coalition — are currently under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, which is alleging that the coalition’s advancement of progressive Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) policies may constitute non-competitive activity in violation of U.S. antitrust law.
JPMAM has about $3.1 trillion under management, according to Financial News, while State Street controls about $3.7 trillion in assets under management as of September 2023. Both firms joined Climate Action 100+ in 2020, and BlackRock is now the only top-five asset management company remaining as a member of Climate Action 100+. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Jim Jordan, House Republicans Launch Investigation Into BlackRock, Vanguard, Others Over ESG Practices)
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨 via @henryrodgersdc
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. @Jim_Jordan , @RepDanBishop Threaten Subpoena Of ESG ‘Cartel’
READ MORE: https://t.co/dz7QqWO1uc
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 5, 2023
“Today’s decisions by JPMorgan and State Street are big wins for freedom and the American economy, and we hope more financial institutions follow suit in abandoning collusive ESG actions,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan wrote of the withdrawals in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter.
JPMAM has built up a team of about 40 professionals who specialize in sustainable investing, providing it the ability to pursue its own climate-oriented strategies, a JPMAM spokesperson told Financial News.
“Given these strengths and the evolution of its own stewardship capabilities, JPMAM has determined that it will no longer participate in Climate Action 100+ engagements,” the spokesperson told Financial News.
JPMAM and State Street are the latest major Western firms to drop out of climate-oriented corporate initiatives. Vanguard, another massive asset manager, withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Management initiative in 2022, while major insurers including Lloyd’s of London, Allianz and Axa all pulled out of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance in 2023, according to Reuters.
“After careful review, State Street Global Advisors has concluded the enhanced Climate Action 100+ Phase 2 requirements for signatories will not be consistent with our independent approach to proxy voting and portfolio company engagement,” a spokesperson for State Street told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As a result, we have decided to withdraw from Climate Action 100+.”
Climate Action 100+ does not comment on the circumstances surrounding individual departures from its ranks, a spokesperson told the DCNF.
JPMAM did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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H/T Ron Long, mark1w, cedarsand, who pointed me to different articles but same story.
‘…Climate Action 100+, a coalition of investors and asset managers with a combined $68 trillion under management that pushes corporations to reduce emissions and adopt climate risk disclosure practices…’
Selling rope to Communists seems to be big business.
Any firm involved with ESG “investing” is violating their fiduciary duty, and I would argue embezzling customer funds for a political campaign.
Exactly. They are handling, for the most part, OPM (Other People’s Money).
Now our elected representatives need to be held accountable for THEIR breach of fiduciary duty with billions of OUR (the taxpayers) money.
ANY “investment” in solar, wind, electric/hybrid vehicles, “carbon storage,” and the twisted, corrupt, “research” that provides the selling propaganda for such things by our representatives is CRIMINALLY FRAUDULENT (for, with knowledge or with duty-breaching reckless disregard of the facts (about both the utter lack of need for such junk/the junk’s gross inefficiencies), our “fund managers,” with intent to deceive their taxpayer “investors,” are shoveling our money at scams from which they often personally benefit).
Could this be an awakening of the absurdity of the “climate change agenda” and ESG movement?
Or could this be that those leaving late are going to get totally screwed … and those that left early are going to profit from cleaning up the remnants of the failures.
Are the remaining sheep and their supporters going to get sheared and bloodied by JPMorgan etal.
Exxon is apparently taking steps in court to keep activist ESG proposals out of shareholder meetings and off their agendas…
“alleging that proposals seeking an increased pace for (Net Zero) reductions in emissions amount to “intrusion” into ExxonMobil’s ordinary business operations and should not be put to a shareholder vote.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/exxonmobil-strikes-back-energy-9267578/
As a long-term stock holder in Exxon, I have hoped against hope they would some day grow a pair. Who knew that all along they were “the little engine that could”?
Notable that whilst court action isn’t required to let them in, but it’s needed to kick them out.
Yes. It isn’t that they had a sudden epiphany or change of heart. They are probably still green at heart, but are realizing that the commitments that institutional investors have to make to remain a member of Climate Action are in direct opposition to their exercise of good judgment as fiduciaries for their clients. They were facing significant shareholder lawsuits if they had honored their Climate Action commitments
More good news.
Yes! 😀
It used to be that the fiduciary obligation of corporate management was to shareholders. About the time I went the joint business and law school program at Harvard it got broadened to ‘stakeholders’—shareholders, employees, customers. It never extended to ESG, and never should.
BTW, my son’s wife is the #2 person in JPMC’s ‘green’ investing team. Their charter specifically includes earning a portfolio rate of return equal to the bank’s average. Jamie Dimon is a very good CEO.
“After careful review” translates to “we are going to get sued by our investors/stock holders for putting social/political issues before our fiduciary duty and we don’t have a leg to stand on.”
That’s the very one.
Also “Our investors/shareholders aren’t buying this crap.”
The quicksand foundation is quivering !
Let’s all hope it collapses completely.
Yes. This is but one indicator. Others include:
Rud,
It is still a puzzle why your clarity of thought, logic and expression, listed here, remains elusive in some major business circles. I can see some forms of inducement or thinking encouraging major business to go along with constructs like DEI, but I cannot understand how long it is taking for the pennies to drop and action to start.
The best I can imagine is that we are seeing belief and ambition dominating logic and analysis. If this is so, it seems to be a factor since about year 2000, because the major players of my acquaintance before then would not have looked twice at the silliness.
Geoff S
Blackrock is basically out of CA100+ too, just it’s international division still in.
are these guys foretelling the result of the next presidential election, and, putting plenty good money on it
bye bye brandon
My brother complained that his pension funds lost 30% in the first year after compulsory cash-up at age 71 (Canadian law). He and his accountant are believers.
At risk of being too optimistic, I think we may have reached the high water mark of the Gore/Kerry/Greta approach to climate change.
Many of those still wedded to Global Warming Theory may start entertaining Bjorn Lonborg’s advice in favor of gradual adaptation over radical transformation.
One can hope
meanwhile evidence of gradual moderate warming is likely to grow and a sense of emergency subside.
The cautionary principle should apply.
All these clowns who thing Earth is a Greenhouse and a trace gas can alter the energy balance so all carbon based fuels should be abandoned should be asking – Could we be wrong?
What if CO2 does nothing. That means we have no idea why the climate is changing. But history shows us that the climate changes and is apt to repeat. What if we are heading into glaciation? We need to be planning for that now because it is a very significant change.
The notion that wind turbines and solar panels can save the planet when they are under kilometres of ice is magical thinking indeed.
The warming of the northern hemisphere is baked in due to the shifting sunlight until the ice advances southward and downward from the mountain tops. It is mostly still retreating so still a couple of years away from advancing.
There’s a thought, Rick. Imagine a glacier, slowly advancing and pushing over those wind turbines, and crushing the panels. Lovely 😉
“Climate” has been redefined by the World Meteorological Organization to be only 30 years now, so it is always changing.
But they are implementing the precautionary principle.
You just do not understand, RW… those wind turbines and solar panels are the very things that will stop that ice from advancing. Please pay attention!
Some positive signs from elsewhere:
Climate change actions and motivational madness generates push-back in the developed world
Victoria has the ideal spot to install thousands of wind turbines without impacting on any farms or even whales. Port Phillip is the centre of Melbourne. It is 200,000Ha of shallow water with houses and industry all around. Filling Port Phillip with wind turbines would signal to the world how committed Australia was to the ideal of perfect weather by eliminating carbon fuels.
Australia needs to take lessons from the Dutch and embrace wind turbines. Think of the spectacle of row after row after row of wind turbines adorning the horizon. On the western side, the sun would appear over those turbines just ticking over as the morning breeze firms. Those on the eastern side would see the sunset spinning away harvesting subsidies like there is no tomorrow on the afternoon sea breeze. Truly an awesome sight. that warms the heart of every wealthy environmentalist harvesting subsidies from the plebs.
But Ric,
I enjoy your sarcasm, but you are missing the factor of “power”. Not electrical power, but people power.
If you put turbines over this shallow sea, you are depriving the promoters of the part of the exercise that holds their interest. That is, they are deprived of whatever arguments they can concoct to coerce, bully, pay with OPM, the farmers and graziers and other landholders into parting with some of their ownership, control, productivity, enjoyment of the land.
I have witnessed more than once the champagne pops when this intrusive crowd secures a win in a court. The joy comes from their exercise of power over others, not so much from the creation of an asset for the benefit of mankind.
It is an ugly game.
Geoff S
Story tip.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/uk-economy-slides-into-recession-ahead-of-election/news-story/a2a230f37b148e85bc081ee135efb096
UK slides into official recession.
Maybe the governments there have been drinking too much Bud Light?
After all –
#Go Woke, (and we all know the rest . . . }
Usually you don’t win all of the battles on the way to winning the war, however, the CAGW 1.5degree Burning Hell On Earth Greenies are losing some big ones. I Steyn going to appeal? Is AI the CAGW crowd’s last hope? Will Fanny get it kicked? Maybe happy times are ahead.
Kicking a Fanny, conjures imagines, that boggle the mind! 🙃
True. Kicking a fanny in the US might be one thing but it means something very different in the UK and Australia.
“JPMAM has built up a team of about 40 professionals who specialize in sustainable investing, providing it the ability to pursue its own climate-oriented strategies, …”
I.e., JPMAM no longer will be in a stupid collective, JPMAM will instead be stupid all on its own.
I believe it means that they will change investment policy when and in the direction they see fit, not being bound anymore by the ludicrous ESG straitjacket.
This is good news but the true believers in gov/ politics will keep squandering our money as long as they can get away with. And the sheep are so conditioned and brainwashed- and the MSM OMG still spews this sustainable advocacy crap till ya just wanna vomit.
Plus leftists never really admit they were wrong. Most leftist stopped learning any thing new about “ climate science” once they decided it was “ settled”. Idiots and a nasty pink version of national( fascist) socialists -the whole pack of em.
I am open to some suggestions on a long term fossil fuel portfolio. It really is a no brainer once all this CAGW crap blows over. Fossil fuel and some nuclear has to be it or we go back to the Stone Age , no real alternative. And we are not going back to the Stone Age . Most libs I know are pure virtue signalers only and that is as far as they go.
Withdrawing from an organization and changing their actual behavior are different things. Only time and careful observation can determine if anything has actually changed.
In capital markets money (representing the collective will of the people) is far smarter than ideologue politicians or policy-makers. We are fortunate we have systems that respond to common sense and the natural lows of nature and commerce. Without that we would all be part of a cult of self destruction.
Would you mean “the natural laws of ” ?
From the story, it appears that JPMAM will continue with sustainable investment practices using its own 40- person internal team