He is both protecting the progress we’ve made and advocating for more. Fink’s aim in 2022 is for CEOs to stay the course, continue to serve the breadth of stakeholders, and resist being “hijacked” by the right or left. Will the political divide in our nation undermine stakeholder capitalism, just as it is becoming mainstream? After two tumultuous years in which the interconnectedness of business and society became evident, Mr. Larry Fink is worried about losing ground. Turn our stock insights into action with a subscription to Morningstar Investor.Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP) What's in it for investors? As Fink pointed out in his letter, "It is through effective stakeholder capitalism that capital is efficiently allocated, companies achieve durable profitability, and value is created and sustained over the long term." Today, sustainable investing is helping enable the transition toward stakeholder capitalism. Investing used to reinforce the idea of shareholder primacy. Sustainable investors are spurring companies to address issues that affect workers, customers, communities, and climate. They know it reflects poorly on broader stakeholder perceptions of the company, which affects reputation, brand, talent acquisition and retention, and even regulatory decisions. Today, few companies want to be excluded from or be underweight in ESG indexes, or otherwise singled out as poor ESG performers. Taken together, these sustainable investment approaches are leading companies to address material ESG issues they may have overlooked or not considered relevant. They are also, in record numbers, voting their proxies in favor of ESG-related proposals at company meetings. Most sustainable investors, and an increasing number of investors who don't use any of these other approaches, are using direct engagement with companies to urge improvement on ESG performance and a greater focus on long-term value creation. A strategy may focus on including companies with positive or net positive societal and environmental impacts. A sustainable strategy may favor companies with better-or best-ESG practices relative to their industry peers, regarding them as promising long-term investment opportunities. Some may exclude or be underweight in companies that have high levels of material ESG risks or purchase them only if the ESG risks are priced into the stock. Some may exclude firms lacking a positive social purpose. Another way of saying that, for equity investing in particular, is to say that sustainable investing is a set of investment approaches intended to produce competitive investment returns and promote stakeholder capitalism.Įach sustainable investment approach promotes stakeholder capitalism in its own way. In the Morningstar Sustainable Investing Framework, we define sustainable investing as a set of investment approaches that seek to deliver competitive financial results while also driving positive environmental, social, and corporate governance outcomes. Sustainable investing is closely connected with stakeholder capitalism. Just as investors played a key role in the shareholder-primacy era, with an obsessive focus on short-term performance, they will also play a key role in the transition to the stakeholder capitalism era. Maximizing quarterly earnings may have created a lot of value for shareholders, as intended, but perhaps not for other corporate stakeholders: customers, employees, communities, and the planet itself. Systemic issues like the global financial crisis, climate change, and growing inequality have led to an increasing realization that a singular focus on shareholders may be causing problems like these or making them worse. The 21st century, so far, has proved to be a challenge to so-called shareholder primacy, and perhaps it will be its undoing.
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