For years corporations have faced pressure from the left to pivot beyond “shareholder value” to think of wider stakeholders and longer-term risks such as climate change. But that so-called ESG movement faces rising criticism.
Proposal 6 of the proxy statement for this week’s annual meeting at Bank of America reads like many proposals routinely pushed by progressive shareholders. It calls for the bank to split the CEO and board chairman positions between two people rather than concentrating power in the hands of a single person.
Nearby on the ballot were other proposals from outsider shareholders to curb fossil-fuel loans and to examine racial equity in the bank’s operations.
But Proposal 6 didn’t come from progressives.
It was sponsored, instead, by the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative nonprofit in greater Washington that is a leader in the fight against environmental, social, and governance – or ESG investing. For decades, progressives have used ESG shareholder activism to convince corporations to support everything from greenhouse gas mitigation to gay rights. By copying their tactics and even the language of their shareholder proposals, conservatives hope to convince American corporations to stop supporting liberal causes.