20 May 2020 State Street CEO Suggests Company’s Leftist Commitments are a Promotional Ploy

Push for ESG Goals Forces Hard-Pressed Companies to Spend Money On Questionable Ideas in a Time of Global Economic Crisis

“Drop the Whole ESG Scam and Get Back to Your Duty to Your Clients,” Advises FEP’s Shepard

Washington, D.C. – State Street CEO Ronald P. O’Hanley affirmed today that the company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments are subordinated to its longstanding and legally-mandated obligation to serve the interests of its shareholder clients. This assertion raises questions about State Street’s well-publicized recent demands that companies in which State Street owns stock must conform to an enhanced ESG agenda.

Scott Shepard

During the company’s virtual annual shareholder meeting, Scott Shepard, Coordinator of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, asked O’Hanley:

State Street intends to hold American businesses hostage to its narrow political preferences by demanding that companies in which it invests ascribe to its ESG goals. While sometimes nobly articulated, these are in fact just a collection of left-wing policies that, if and when enacted, end up costing companies vast sums for little or no long-term benefit. Especially during the economic crisis that is following on the heels of the pandemic lockdown, how can you justify using your clients’ shareholder status to apply a legally suspect concentration of market power to demand changes that do not serve their or national economic interests?

O’Hanley answered, in part:

[W]hat State Street Global Advisors does in its stewardship activities is look to the boards of these underlying companies to make sure that they are looking at the longterm value creation. Any position or stewardship activity that State Street performs is with that sole goal, of ensuring longterm shareholder value creation. Ultimately it’s not our decision what companies do, and ultimately we will remain invested in those companies, but because we do not have the ability to not be invested in them, we take the stewardship role seriously and we will continue to do so.

Audio of the exchange can be heard here. A written, annotated version of Shepard’s question can be found here.

After the meeting, Shepard responded:

State Street has more than 225 years of experience in American stock markets. For most of that time it has been a fiduciary steward to its clients, the shareholders whose assets it manages. Recently though, it appears to be contemplating a different course.

State Street recently announced an intention to use its clients’ shares to force companies to take costly and politically partisan ESG positions. While these positions are often nobly phrased, they in fact cost companies huge amounts in compliance costs in aid of ill-considered environmental efforts and interventions in employment and corporate governance that are counterproductive to shareholders while failing to create meaningful countervailing benefits for other parties.

An ESG push can have a material effect in two ways. Either it’s a fairly bald attempt to push corporations into left-wing political positions, or it is a concealed effort to reduce the incentives and overview structures that properly align the interests of shareholder owners and corporate-leader management. Neither of these is a good outcome for shareholders, employees, customers or the companies themselves.

O’Hanley suggests that State Street’s interest in ESG is not material, but promotional. In his response to our question, he recommitted State Street to making only decisions that are in the best interests of shareholder clients. But that has always been the legal and moral obligation of all parties involved. If nothing about this ESG push changes these commitments, then the push is just a promotional ploy – an advertising gambit. However, as an advertising gambit it is both very expensive and highly disingenuous.

It’s not likely that O’Hanley and State Street are going to take my business advice, but I will give it anyway: Drop the whole ESG scam and get back to your duty to your clients. Invest for the best interest of shareholders, which is also necessarily in the best interests of employees and clients. Leave the political posturing to the politicians. We get more than enough from them.

Conservative investors can learn how to oppose leftist ESG goals by downloading FEP’s Investor Value Voter Guide.

Today’s State Street meeting marks the twentieth time FEP has participated in a shareholder meeting in 2020. To schedule an interview with a member of the Free Enterprise Project on this or other issues, contact Judy Kent at (703) 759-0269.

Launched in 2007, the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism and the confluence of big government and big business. Over the past four years alone, FEP representatives have participated in over 100 shareholder meetings – advancing free-market ideals about health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, gun rights, workers’ rights and other important public policy issues. As the leading voice for conservative-minded investors, it annually files more than 90 percent of all right-of-center shareholder resolutions. Dozens of liberal organizations, however, annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions and continue to exert undue influence over corporate America.

FEP activity has been covered by media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Variety, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Drudge Report, Business Insider, National Public Radio and SiriusXM. FEP’s work was prominently featured in Wall Street Journal writer Kimberley Strassel’s 2016 book The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech (Hachette Book Group).

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Sign up for email updates here. Follow us on Twitter at @FreeEntProject and @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.