Six GOP House members on Tuesday sent a letter to ‘Climate Action 100+’ in first efforts to investigate whether Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance violates antitrust laws.
From The New American:
Addressed to Mindy Lubber and Simiso Nzima, the letter requests that Climate Action 100+ produce and preserve scores of documents relating to how the group pushes ESG priorities on corporations. Among the firms involved with Climate Action 100+ are BlackRock, Rockefeller Asset Management, Rothschild and Co. Asset Management in both Europe and the U.K., and HSBC Global Asset Management. Several regional, state, and local investment managers are also listed as “investor signatories.” Lubber is the CEO and president of Ceres, a non-profit which primarily concerns itself with “sustainability,” and Nzima heads CalPERS the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. The six congressmen, all Republicans, are Jim Jordan (Ohio), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Tom McClintock(Calif.), Scott Fitzgerald (Wisc.), and Cliff Bentz (Ore). All are current members of the House Judiciary Committee, and Jordan is expected to take the chairmanship once the GOP gains a majority in the House in January. It was unclear if any investigation will be conducted under the auspices of that committee or another one. The legislators didn’t hold back on what they thought about ESG investments. “At its core, ESG is merely partisan politics masquerading as responsible corporate governance. A major ESG ‘policy centerpiece’ is stifling investments in oil and gas, and Wall Street firms have ‘bragg[ed] about their coordinated efforts to choke off investment in energy.’ Boycotting certain energy investment, however, is just a subset of the types of ESG-related goals,” the letter stated.
