Lorenna Buck, Managing Director, Ariel Alternatives Ron Homer, Chief Strategist, U.S. Impact Investing, RBC Global Asset Management, Roy Swan, Director, Mission Investments, Ford Foundation Moderator: Lee Clifford, Fortune
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00:00Hi, everyone.
00:02All right, so we named this panel, Is ESG Dead?
00:05But obviously, I don't think that our panelists are
00:08going to say that ESG is dead.
00:10Spoiler alert.
00:11So let's just talk a little bit about the ESG backlash,
00:15where it came from, and what ESG is evolving into.
00:19Lorena, you want to go first?
00:20Sure.
00:22Well, that's a loaded question.
00:24I mean, I think the ESG backlash, I think,
00:27has come from a few dimensions in my mind.
00:29I mean, there's the piece of it that is it's become politicized.
00:32And so there's a lot of drama around that.
00:34I think the other piece has been that what ESG means
00:39has also been, I'd say, confusing for folks.
00:42I think we've all heard the term of greenwashing.
00:44And so it's made it really hard to know what does it mean
00:47and how useful is it as a term.
00:50And so, I don't know, in my opinion,
00:51I think that there's a high likelihood that the acronym
00:55ESG may be dying.
00:57But I think what's underneath it,
00:58for the folks who actually believe that these are important parts
01:00of managing a business, is not going anywhere.
01:04And you called it impact investing, which is another name.
01:07What terminology?
01:09Well, actually, impact investing is entirely different than ESG.
01:13So ESG to me, it's a way to evaluate how a company operates.
01:19It looks at its processes, and it takes into account
01:23environmental, social, and government factors
01:26that might impinge on its ability to make money and to survive.
01:32Whereas impact investing, you're actually looking to make
01:35a financial return as well as provide a specific social outcome.
01:40So it's kind of a hyper ESG, but we're looking at the end product,
01:46end outcomes, and trying to align that to make a financial return.
01:53And so, I would say we're creating social alpha and investment alpha,
01:59and the best marriage is when one creates the other.
02:04When solving a social problem actually creates outsourced financial returns.
02:11All right, so I'm going to do something a little bit different
02:13without asking permission.
02:15Can I get a showing of hands, everyone in this room,
02:19who believes that fairness is bad?
02:24Who believes that fairness is good?
02:29Okay, I think I have an overwhelming majority.
02:32This is not your definition of fairness.
02:34Well, the reason why I wanted to raise that point
02:39is the power of words and semantics.
02:43So if you think about the S of ESG and you think about the concept of fairness,
02:49most people agree that fairness is good, but there's also a backlash against DEI,
02:56and DEI is just another term for fairness.
03:00ESG has faced backlash even though it is simply a risk management framework
03:08that was created to provide non-gap information for investment modeling purposes.
03:18It has, and I'm going to say it has, the backlash to some extent is rational,
03:25and here's what I mean by that.
03:27If your livelihood is based on working at a fossil fuel company,
03:35if your wealth is tied up in a fossil fuel company,
03:39and you're receiving ratings for the company that are saying this is a terrible company,
03:45what reaction would you expect?
03:48So there are, I think, ways to address this, and we can talk about that later,
03:53but I wanted to layer in the power of words, the ability for words to be weaponized.
04:01So what words are you using to describe what you do now?
04:05Oh, we've come up with a term called patriotic capitalism,
04:12and the reason why I came up with that term,
04:16I don't know if it's the first time it's been used, it's certainly in this context.
04:20The reason why is because of this, the word patriotic and the word capitalism
04:27are both imbued with such positive meaning
04:33that they're much harder to weaponize than unknown terms like DEI or even WOKE.
04:41And when we talk about patriotic capitalism in the context of impact investing,
04:45we think about investing with a few considerations in mind.
04:49Country, democracy, and the common good.
04:55And we believe, and we have proof based on our investment performance,
04:59and there's plenty of others,
05:01we believe that it is possible to generate superior financial returns
05:07through patriotic capitalism, which is essentially fairness.
05:11The simplest example I can give on this is fairness to workers.
05:19So one of our impact investing themes is quality jobs.
05:23The quality jobs theme looks at what has happened in the lives of workers
05:29over the last sort of 40 to 50 years.
05:33And one of the things I have to confess to everyone
05:39is because of my background and educational history,
05:47I rely quite a bit on the advice of dead white men.
05:53And so Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, if you read all their stuff,
06:01what you'll find is the only way to have a healthy economic system
06:07is by being fair to workers.
06:10And I'm going to stop there because I don't want to monopolize time.
06:12We can return to some of these thoughts.
06:15Anyone else have any confessions they want to make?
06:19Well, one thing, you talked about semantics and wordsmith.
06:26What I like about impact investment, it's pretty clear.
06:29You have a social outcome, you either want that social outcome or you don't.
06:34And you have financial returns, you either make it or you don't.
06:38And so that cuts through a lot of the wordsmanship.
06:43And I think there's plenty of opportunity to have impact,
06:47whether it's in health care, education, promoting fairness,
06:50developing communities.
06:54There's plenty of problems to solve.
06:57One of the measurements that we use is the United Nations Sustainable
07:01Development Goals.
07:02And we try to look through those universal goals
07:08that societies and countries and individuals aspire to
07:13and see if we can find ways to make money fulfilling those needs.
07:18Yeah.
07:19Well, and it's funny because I would say,
07:21so I like the idea of patriotic capitalism because,
07:25so we don't consider ourselves an impact fund.
07:27We actually say we are capitalists with a capital C,
07:30even though we expect to have a lot of impact.
07:32But part of it is because I think we do see it as just so fundamental
07:36to the fairness that we're trying to drive.
07:38And so similar to the idea of quality jobs,
07:43that's a big part of how we think about it.
07:45We're thinking about if we're going to invest in a company,
07:47we want to invest in a company that's going to create quality jobs in the US.
07:50And if we're going to do that,
07:51we hope to have an impact on the folks that are the least employed.
07:55Who are those people?
07:57Who are the folks who need those jobs?
07:58It's going to be overwhelmingly minorities who need to be uplifted
08:02if we're going to get to a place where we have more equitable wealth
08:04distribution in this country.
08:06And so that's what we focus on.
08:08Well, I'll quote another dead white man, Walter Wriston,
08:11who was the CEO of Citibank.
08:14And Citibank was just embarking on a global footprint.
08:19And they asked him, how does he decide where he goes,
08:23where Citibank was going?
08:24And he says, well, capital goes where it's invited and welcomed
08:28and stays where it's well treated.
08:31So in part, I think when you talked about ESG and whether there's impact,
08:40capital is impacted by its relationship to governments,
08:44relationship to society, relationship to its clients,
08:47to its individuals that it serves, et cetera.
08:50And so when you look at the question ESG did,
08:54that it's like saying due diligence is dead.
08:57I mean, why wouldn't you look at what a company does?
09:00Because it has geopolitical risk.
09:04It has government intervention risk.
09:08It has a risk with its workers.
09:11And so all of these things are important tools
09:15to evaluate the ability of a company to generate cash
09:19and to pay its bills and to survive.
09:21Well, let's dig into how you guys decide which companies to invest in and bet on.
09:26We were talking backstage, and you said when you have a lot of money
09:30to deploy, companies find you.
09:32They want the investment.
09:35What are you looking for?
09:37So for me, I would say we're right now very focused on identifying companies
09:42that create good jobs for communities of color in the US.
09:46And I wouldn't say just focus on that, but again,
09:48it's this idea of good jobs, not the ones that are going to go offshore,
09:51that are going to go away, not the ones that
09:53are going to be completely disrupted by AI,
09:55but the ones that are going to stay around.
09:56And so for me, that's been actually looking
09:58at a lot of businesses that might be utility services, technician
10:01businesses, places where no matter what, you're
10:03going to need a person doing something.
10:06And the benefit of that is, to me, they are going to be good jobs.
10:09They're going to be skilled jobs.
10:10They may not all require a four-year degree,
10:13so they can be more accessible.
10:14And if we're being thoughtful about the ways in which you actually
10:17start to create pathways into these jobs,
10:19then we can have a more competitive workforce, one that
10:21might stay around with us for a while.
10:23If we're thinking about the various other levers
10:26that we can use as tools to better incentivize those workers to stay
10:31with us, like actually finding ways to incent not just the fact that you
10:35have a 401k plan in place, but actually getting participation in that,
10:39creating equity ownership plans, things that actually make folks
10:42feel like they are owners of the business and therefore want to stay,
10:45then we're going to be able to have the best possible business that
10:48can grow faster than others, because we can keep the talent.
10:51And so to me, that's what gets really exciting, is getting
10:54to spend time identifying those pockets, those businesses,
10:57and putting together the roadmaps that can allow us to be wildly successful.
11:02So my background was in banking.
11:05And I actually started back when the business of banking
11:08was actually growing its community, when it was restricted geographically.
11:13So I'm kind of old school.
11:15So my focus has been, and our focus at RBC,
11:20has been around building strong communities, particularly
11:23those communities that are under-resourced and underdeveloped
11:28and underserved.
11:29And so we think we stress home ownership, small business development,
11:36and quality, safe housing.
11:39And to me, that's the bedrock.
11:41Also health care, clean water, and infrastructure.
11:45So that's our focus.
11:49We actually think there's plenty of opportunity to make money.
11:52Ironically, when people look at under-resourced and underserved
11:55communities, a big R sign comes up, risk, risk, risk, risk,
12:00and a negative return, return, return.
12:03But there is actually a number of tools that are available.
12:07And those tools are actually growing in the hands of more resourceful people
12:13around making small business loans.
12:15I think after COVID with PPP and Black Lives Matter protests,
12:22we realized there are many communities throughout our country
12:26that suffered inordinately and who felt the brunt of all of that.
12:34And that long term, that's not going to be healthy for a strong country.
12:40Talk about patriotism.
12:41And that there's interventions that have taken place
12:45in the past using government tools, whether it's
12:48the GSEs and Fannie and Freddie, or whether it's
12:51the Small Business Administration.
12:53And I'll give you a story.
12:54Starbucks came to us right in the middle of COVID,
12:58and they were having problems with expanding some of their stores.
13:01And they wanted to do something with small businesses
13:04so they could be a friendly neighbor.
13:06We took $50 million from them, invested in SBA loans around the country.
13:14At the time, they had cash, and they got a little extra spread out
13:18of their cash proceeds.
13:20It's full faith and credit of the government.
13:23And their return now is 6.7% return.
13:28And in an environment that was 1.5%, 2%.
13:33So you can actually, same thing with home mortgages.
13:36There's plenty of opportunity.
13:39Between Fintech, part of the problem in some of these communities
13:43is there are plenty of people who are qualified
13:45and should have access to capital.
13:48But the transaction costs of finding them,
13:50and because their deals are so small, they've been underserved.
13:54But the combination of Fintech, as well as social media
14:00to educate in financial literacy, I think
14:03has opened some of those doors.
14:05And when you aggregate those, particularly in the mortgages areas,
14:09we've proven since 1996, and we've been doing this through 2007, 2008,
14:142009, that small balance mortgage loans to working class
14:20and lower income individuals based on 30 years
14:24outperform substantially to the extent
14:27that even BlackRock and PIMCO and all the rest
14:31will pay a premium for those if you can create
14:33a pool made up of those loans.
14:35Wow, that's a great stat.
14:37And Roy, you said you're going to name some names for us.
14:40Let me first zoom out to 30,000 feet for the Ford Foundation.
14:46We have what I'll refer to as the audacious and ambitious goal
14:52of systems change.
14:53We want to change the way, the form of capitalism in our country
14:59and perhaps the world.
15:02Going back to that quality jobs impact investing theme and workers,
15:06there's a lot of, as an investor, you're always
15:09looking for low-hanging fruit.
15:11And just real quickly, workers are the wellspring
15:16of innovation, productivity, profitability.
15:20In order to generate that, they need to be engaged.
15:24Globally, 70% to 80% of workers are disengaged.
15:29That is costing $8 trillion in annual profits
15:33globally, $550 billion in the US alone.
15:39That does not include the, going back to the fairness topic,
15:43that does not include the cost of unfairness,
15:47race-based unfairness in the US, which has been estimated
15:50to have cost the US $50 trillion since 1990.
15:56So we invest in private equity funds that focus on quality jobs.
16:03We look for diverse fund managers because 1.4%
16:08of all capital of $80 trillion plus in capital in the US
16:11is managed by firms owned by women and people of color.
16:14People of color, that's a problem.
16:16And on the naming names, one of the things I mentioned
16:19we were talking backstage is in the ESG area,
16:21one way to manage the weaponization is to go from ESG qualitative
16:27disclosures to currency-based quantification of the ESG disclosures.
16:34We've just invested in a relatively early stage AI-driven company
16:40that is focused on quantifying ESG so that it can be used directly
16:47by investors in their investment modeling.
16:50It can be used by policymakers so they can decide whether to force companies
16:54to internalize costs or tax those costs and regulators, and by consumers
16:59so they can make decisions based on what is this company costing society.
17:04I should stop.
17:05You know, in Europe, this has been longstanding, the use of ESG,
17:10because in Europe, a company is part of an ecosystem
17:15and it's not divorced from the other sectors.
17:18And so ESG and most companies, European companies,
17:23are required to put out an ESG statement just
17:27and it's acquired as an offering memorandum or a prospectus.
17:32So I think the US has a little bit of a catch-up to come in.
17:38So it's patriotism in Europe as well as in the United States.
17:44That takes us to the end of our panel.
17:47Thank you guys for the really thoughtful conversation.
17:50We appreciate it.