一些世界上最大的set managers have been talking a lot lately about sustainable capital markets, stakeholder capitalism and how improved environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure can contribute to more resilient markets. While these organizations are taking steps in the right direction, their companies’ actual behavior in the marketplace often falls short of their leaders’ proclamations, and those leaders’ visions for capital markets fail to rise to the increasingly urgent challenges that confront our society.
最近2020可必威体育2018持续性会计标准委员会（SASB）研讨会, the CEOs of Bank of America (BofA), BlackRock and State Street provided their views on the role of the private sector in addressing societal challenges and why ESG integration is no longer optional. They led with their thoughts on stakeholder capitalism, a concept that has exploded since Aug. 19, 2019, when the Business Roundtable (BRT)更新它的公司治理原则重新定义“公司促进为所有美国人提供经济的宗旨”。
CEOs from 181 publicly traded companies — including those addressing the SASB Symposium — signed the principles, which purportedly signaled an end to Milton Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy established in the 1970s, and the beginning of a new era of stakeholder capitalism.
“只有一个利益相关者 - 股东的概念 - 已经进化和改变，”世界上最大的资产经理Blackrock首席执行官Larry Fink说。他指出，企业需要与员工和客户合作，并在全球化的世界中与企业运营的社团合作。
We’re not looking for short-term blips as a shareholder but rather durability.
“这造成了一些困难，而是管理这一组织的公司以长期盈利，”Fink说。“我们并没有寻找作为股东的短期削减，而是耐用。在像大流行这样的挑战周期中，那些公司就是那些使其通过和忍受的。这就是管理和董事会需要考虑的情况。”
美国银行首席执行官Brian Moynihan同意，增加了对所有选区的长期关注有助于吸引人才和客户。
州街全球顾问首席执行官Cyrus Taporevala评论说，资产经理和业主正在为三个趋势做出反应：ESG因素和投资风险之间日益增长;最终投资者希望看到他们的投资表达的ESG偏好;和世界各地的监管机构发出意图需要更多围绕ESG标准，报告和投资。
一个克隆呼吁收敛
All three CEOs repeatedly asserted an urgent imperative for the financial services industry to "coalesce" and "converge" around standardized disclosure of ESG information and data, perhaps unsurprising given that SASB — the symposium’s host — is a leading disclosure framework. Their general argument was that standardized disclosure is less burdensome for companies, which will enhance the quality of reporting and encourage smaller companies to participate. It allows for collection and analysis of large data sets that help investors, regulators and the public to assess and compare companies’ ESG performance, they said.
除了SASB之外，CEO还指出了与气候相关的财务披露（TCFD）的工作队作为领先标准。Moynihan推荐与联合国可持续发展目标（SDGS）的融合。
"If that’s what the world told us we need to do across 90 countries in 2015, then that’s what we should be aiming to achieve," he said.
The CEOs also emphasized the value of transparency.
“我们需要人们来说他们所做的事情，这样他们就可以鼓励他们做得更多，”Moynihan说。"When we [at Bank of America] make decisions about whom to lend to, we have the information, but the world may not. It’s a little behind the curtain. Standardized disclosure will cascade down the system, even to a middle-market private company where employees and customers will ask, ‘Where’s our disclosure?’"
"Transparency reveals the good and the bad," Fink said. "Better financial and sustainability disclosure forces management and the board to have laser focus. It lifts us faster, even if we’re embarrassed at times when we’re not moving as quickly as we should."
太小了太慢了
事实上，他们不会像他们应该尽快移动，这三家公司的行为并不完全设定这些CEOSESPOUSE的例子。
美国银行是世界的fourth leading financer of fossil fuels甚至作为脱碳经济脱落的必要条件，避免了气候变化的最严重影响，当天的迫切需要迫切。2019年公司agreed支付420万美元以解决联邦合同遵守计划所带来的就业歧视指控。尽管如此，美国银行maintains它正在履行对利益攸关方最初的承诺。
标准化披露将级联系统，甚至到中间市场私营公司，员工和客户会问，“我们在哪里披露？”
Among 60 of the world’s largest asset managers, BlackRock was the fourth least supportive and State Street the 13th least supportive of shareholders’ efforts to promote better social and environmental stewardship among companies in their portfolios, according to a recentanalysis通过竞选组织分享行动。两家公司自有的报告和披露其社会和环境管理缺乏他们在市场上争夺冠军的透明度和有意义的信息。
This may be because a pernicious tension is built into the entire stakeholder capitalism construct.
A question of purpose and prosperity
"We’re not trying to disrupt a company or destroy their footprint or business," Fink said. "I know some people would like for us to do that, but that is not our fiduciary responsibility. Our fiduciary responsibility is to maximize profit."
"State Street Global Advisors is looking to get the best risk-adjusted return for investors, and we come at ESG from a perspective of value, not values," Taporevala said. "It’s not up to us as a fiduciary to decide what the right values are."
Therein lies the conundrum: What’s best for the social and environmental systems on which our economy depends won’t always align with an individual company’s profit maximization. Companies, investors and shareholders will have to reckon with this reality.
Rick Alexander, founder and CEO of The Shareholder Commons, expounded on this point in a February文章:
大多数投资者持有广泛多样化的投资组合，并依赖于他们的工作作为主要金融资产。他们需要一个健康的经济和行星，以便拥有坚实的投资组合，体面的工资和善良的生活。他们知道一些公司需要投降股东价值，以保护我们所有人依赖的关键系统（思考煤炭，石油，烟草，而不是巧合，威胁到威胁系统稳定的大型金融机构）。
A recentstudydetermined that publicly traded companies create annual social and environmental costs of $2.2 trillion. While any given company may profit by ignoring costs that it can externalize, its diversified shareholders ultimately pay the price.
Moynihan emphasized that the world’s problems cannot be solved without leadership from the private sector. He pointed to the SDGs, noting that all the charitable spending in the world doesn’t amount to the estimated cost of delivering on those goals.
"You could go to governments, but they’re running huge deficits, and they don’t have the money," Moynihan said.
这三个首席执行官谈到了围绕一套常见的指标和数据组成的重要性，但这只是一个部分解决方案。如果目标是真正保证我们正在进行的繁荣，那么参与资本市场的每个人都必须优先考虑一个蓬勃发展的经济依赖，而不是任何一家公司的利润率。在一天结束时，只有那种方法将提供股东和利益相关者。
