Speaker 1: In the past few years, there's been a major backlash
Speaker 1: to what's called ESG investing. Those letters stand for Environmental, Social,
Speaker 1: and governance, and they refer to looking at particular risks
Speaker 1: that a company might have, so not just their short
Speaker 1: term financial performance, but also how they're looking at environmental
Speaker 1: risks to their supply chain, for example, or social risks
Speaker 1: in terms of whether or not they're tracking diversity in
Speaker 1: their workforce, things like that. ESG has been around for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and it's mostly been pretty non
Speaker 1: controversial up until a few years ago. Now there's this
Speaker 1: huge backlash. People are calling it quote unquote woke capital,
Speaker 1: all those kinds of things, and that's been driven by
Speaker 1: a couple of factors. First, this increase in the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so of what's called sharehold activism, so
Speaker 1: when people who hold shares in a particular company put
Speaker 1: forth resolutions aimed at improving that company's environmental or social performance.
Speaker 1: And the second is a move by the Securities and
Speaker 1: Exchange Commission in the US that started a few years
Speaker 1: ago to try to provide some kind of consistency in
Speaker 1: the way that companies report on climate risk. In particular,
Speaker 1: it's always been a little bit loosey goosey, a little
Speaker 1: bit inconsistent, kind of changing from company to company depending
Speaker 1: on what industry they're in, or maybe who's auditing their reports,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. So whenever the SEC sees inconsistencies
Speaker 1: like that in a space around investment, they see that
Speaker 1: as their job to provide the sort of consistency and
Speaker 1: stability that investors are looking for. That's why they started
Speaker 1: to tackle this in the first place. And when they
Speaker 1: first announced that they were going to put out some
Speaker 1: kind of climate risk disclosure guidance, initially they talked about
Speaker 1: including what are called scope three emissions. Those are the
Speaker 1: emissions associated with the entire supply chain, so it's the
Speaker 1: inputs up top and the way that your product is
Speaker 1: used and the emissions associated with that. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine lots of companies had an issue with this, from
Speaker 1: animal agg companies to oil and gas companies too, big
Speaker 1: tech companies whose data centers are responsible for a whole
Speaker 1: lot of emissions and emissions that are growing every day.
Speaker 1: We've covered this before in the podcast, but a lot
Speaker 1: of companies fought really hard against the inclusion of scope
Speaker 1: three emissions. Today's guest Andrew Beahar, president of the As
Speaker 1: You Sow Foundation, which focuses on shareholder activism, traces the
Speaker 1: backlash back even a little earlier, to a twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: decision by a group of companies known as the Business Roundtable.
Speaker 1: These are guys that, for the record, were very involved
Speaker 1: in pushing climate science denial and generally obstructing climate policy
Speaker 1: for years. So not big tree hugging liberals by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. They's some of the largest companies
Speaker 1: in the world. But they sat down in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and decided that the way the companies had been operating,
Speaker 1: with this laser focus on short term profits being the
Speaker 1: only thing that mattered, was actually not working, that it
Speaker 1: was ultimately harming their own bottom lines. So they agreed
Speaker 1: to adopt an approach that they called shareholder capitalism. Behar
Speaker 1: says that's what really kicked off a big right wing
Speaker 1: fight against shareholder activism, and esg We've been talking about
Speaker 1: a sort of activism in this series. That's probably one
Speaker 1: that comes to mind more often when people hear the
Speaker 1: word activism getting out in the streets, civil disobedience, protest,
Speaker 1: But this is also a type of activism and it's
Speaker 1: also fasing a big backlash right now, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about it as part of this Real Free
Speaker 1: Speech Threat series. A lot of the recent fight against
Speaker 1: shareholder activism has been led by a guy named Leonard Leo,
Speaker 1: whose name you might recognize if you're a regular listener
Speaker 1: of this podcast. He ran the Federalist Society for a
Speaker 1: long time. He's also often the guy who's pulling the
Speaker 1: strings behind the Republican Attorney's General Association or RAGA, and
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years he's been a recipient
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars of right wing money to continue
Speaker 1: his crusade against any kind of regulation on industry, especially
Speaker 1: regulation on pollution. And it just so happens that he's
Speaker 1: not a big fan of basic civil rights either, so
Speaker 1: going after ESG and shareholder activism fits squarely in his wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: One of the latest battles in this whole anti ESG
Speaker 1: anti shareholder activism fight has been a string of lawsuits
Speaker 1: that are trying to make it effectively illegal for shareholders
Speaker 1: to put forth resolutions around social justice or environmental concerns.
Speaker 1: Excellons filed one of these suits. The National Association of
Speaker 1: manufacturers as filed one American Airlines. These are starting to
Speaker 1: pick up, and again it's all in the context of
Speaker 1: this interconnected fight against really looking at any environmental or
Speaker 1: social justice issues, really trying to separate business interest from that,
Speaker 1: to block any sort of regulation that would in any
Speaker 1: way curtail a business's ability to just focus on profit.
Speaker 1: And of course, again it's a weird fight because in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways the things they're doing to fight
Speaker 1: against looking at these factors are actually harming profit. I
Speaker 1: had a super interesting conversation with Behar about all of
Speaker 1: this that's coming up after this quick break. This is
Speaker 1: drilled the real free speech threat. And I'm Amy Westerbelt.
Speaker 1: So I want to start with the Exon lawsuit if
Speaker 1: you could just walk me through what happened there.
Speaker 2: The excellent lawsuit against our Juna Capital was in response
Speaker 2: to a shareholder resolution that they filed that was basically
Speaker 2: asking for climate disclosure and reduction of emissions. It was
Speaker 2: not an exceptionally out of the ordinary resolution, but Exxon,
Speaker 2: rather than going to a no action, going to the
Speaker 2: SEC and saying we want to take no action on
Speaker 2: this resolution, which is very standard practice if a company
Speaker 2: gets a resolution that they feel as ordinary business is micromanagement.
Speaker 2: It has already had substantial implementation. They go to the
Speaker 2: SEC and in fact, Exon is famous as being the
Speaker 2: only company or maybe one of a few, it files
Speaker 2: a no action on every resolution, as you say, has
Speaker 2: fob no no historically, as you saw, has fouled twenty
Speaker 2: seven resolutions at Exon since twenty ten, and we've had
Speaker 2: twenty seven no actions, so we know Exon knows how
Speaker 2: to file no actions. But rather than filing a no action,
Speaker 2: which we expected, they went to litigation, and once the
Speaker 2: litigation got going, our junis said, you know what, will
Speaker 2: withdraw the resolution. So essentially gave Exon the win. That's
Speaker 2: all I was asking for. We want you to withdraw
Speaker 2: the resolution so don't have to put it on our
Speaker 2: proxy statement. But rather than saying okay, we won, great,
Speaker 2: they said, we want to continue. We want to essentially
Speaker 2: punish this shareholder and we want to make sure that
Speaker 2: they can never file a shareholder resolution again. They want
Speaker 2: to essentially classify that there's two of shareholders, like real
Speaker 2: shareholders and shareholders whore just owned shares to file resolutions.
Speaker 2: So essentially what they're trying to do is to rewrite
Speaker 2: property law. When you buy a share of stock, you
Speaker 2: have property rights that say that you get to decide
Speaker 2: who's on the board of directors, you get to file
Speaker 2: shareholder resolutions, you get dividends, there's basic rules. It's your
Speaker 2: property rights associated with that piece of property. And what
Speaker 2: Excellent's trying to do is to not only newter the
Speaker 2: SEC's power, but also to rewrite this whole idea of
Speaker 2: what rights to shareholders have. And this is part of
Speaker 2: a much bigger crusade that's been going on that we
Speaker 2: generally refer to as the anti ESG crusade that's been
Speaker 2: led for most part by a fellow named Leonard Leo,
Speaker 2: who you might recognize as being the co chair of
Speaker 2: the Federalist Society. He was given one point six billion
Speaker 2: dollars in twenty twenty two mid twenty twenty two essentially
Speaker 2: to try to stop shareholders' rights, to stop shareholders from
Speaker 2: doing what they are allowed by law to do. And
Speaker 2: I can go down that path and tell you exactly
Speaker 2: how he's been doing it because a three tiered strategy
Speaker 2: that they're using, and this is just one part of
Speaker 2: the strategy. So this is a much bigger question, and
Speaker 2: it involves the House Judiciary Committee. It involves filing literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of bills at the state level to make sustainable
Speaker 2: investing illegal, to make assessing and addressing risk illegal at
Speaker 2: the state level. And what the ramifications of this have
Speaker 2: been because it's been a financial disaster for the states
Speaker 2: that have adopted these laws. So it's much bigger piece
Speaker 2: of work. And the excellent lawsuit is just one piece
Speaker 2: of it. There's also several other lawsuits, the National Association
Speaker 2: Manufacturer's lawsuit, the American Airlines lawsuit, Chevron deference. It's all
Speaker 2: one thing, which is take away share holder's basic rights.
Speaker 1: Interesting to place it in the context of all that stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess the anti ESG stuff in general feels like
Speaker 1: an attack on shareholder activism.
Speaker 2: More than a little one. No, that's the centerpiece of it.
Speaker 2: I mean, really, what it is is in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: there was a major decision made by every corporation essentially
Speaker 2: in the world that the ideas of Milton Friedman that
Speaker 2: shareholder premiscy no longer were working. It was just not
Speaker 2: working out. I mean, if you think about it, shareholder primacy,
Speaker 2: which was put forth in the nineteen seventies by Milton
Speaker 2: Friedman says, you can dump in the commons, you can
Speaker 2: have slavery in your supply chain, you can poison your customers.
Speaker 2: That's all okay, so long as you maximize short term
Speaker 2: profit and for well. Back then in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: the holding capacity of the atmosphere to hold carbon was
Speaker 2: much greater, the capacity of the ocean to hold play
Speaker 2: sticks was much greater. So you could be dumping in
Speaker 2: the commons, but it wasn't going to come back and
Speaker 2: bite you. Like right now, what's happening with corporations is
Speaker 2: their supply chains. They can't get raw commodities because well
Speaker 2: just about everything that grows is being harmed by climate change.
Speaker 2: You know, cotton production massively down, I mean, olive oil
Speaker 2: Spain and Southern Europe lost their entire harvest. Coca is
Speaker 2: now the commodity price for coco doubled in the last year.
Speaker 2: So everybody who's seeing all these inflation at the grocery store,
Speaker 2: it's because of climate This is climate inflation, but it's
Speaker 2: also affecting supply chain. So dumping in the commons is
Speaker 2: going to harm the corporation that's doing the dumping. That's
Speaker 2: why in twenty nineteen, one hundred and eighty one companies
Speaker 2: that make up the Business Roundtable said, these ideas no
Speaker 2: longer work. This is not good for us, it's not
Speaker 2: good for our shareholders. It's not good for all of
Speaker 2: our stakeholders to adopt this new idea called stakeholder capitalism.
Speaker 2: You take care of your employees. You want to be
Speaker 2: able to, you know, to really retain to attract the
Speaker 2: best and the brightest. Customer loyalty very important. You don't
Speaker 2: want to poison your customers, want to take care of them.
Speaker 2: Your supply chain incredibly important. You've got to get that
Speaker 2: material in order to bring products to market, you know.
Speaker 2: And of course the communities where you operate, which that
Speaker 2: community could be not only like local community, but also
Speaker 2: the broader the planetary community, because dumping into the atmosphere
Speaker 2: is going to come back to bite you. And I
Speaker 2: mean we saw an example of this just just like
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, Coke and pepsi. They were
Speaker 2: saving a penny on a pound of sugar, and well
Speaker 2: that's Milton Friedman like, okay, great, but they were using
Speaker 2: slavery in their supply chain. And an expos in the
Speaker 2: New York Times came out showing what's going on, and
Speaker 2: so now their brand is associated with it's just horrific
Speaker 2: treatment of laborers. It's going to cost them hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars to rehabilitate their brand, and so it's
Speaker 2: just it's shifting the time horizon from looking at the
Speaker 2: next quarter to looking much broader. And the interesting thing
Speaker 2: is that most investors are actually much more long term
Speaker 2: now that the vast majority about eighty percent of most
Speaker 2: companies investors are sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, borrowin k plans.
Speaker 2: But people have this mythology that you should be making
Speaker 2: these decisions, like really structural decisions for the companies based
Speaker 2: on essentially the fifteen percent of day traders, and that
Speaker 2: idea has shifted. So again mid twenty nineteen, Business Roundtable
Speaker 2: comes out with it and the World Economic Forum endorses
Speaker 2: it as the Fourth Manifesto. This manifesto the Fourth Industrial
Speaker 2: Age that we're moving away from an extract of economy
Speaker 2: to a regenerative economy that's one that's based on justice
Speaker 2: and sustainability. So we're about five years into the implementation
Speaker 2: of that. Now when that decision was made that was
Speaker 2: a real disruption, and that is what the anti ESG
Speaker 2: crusade is about. It's trying to stop this transition that's
Speaker 2: already happening. The market forces are already decided, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to use the heavy hand of big government. There's
Speaker 2: really literally one hundred and forty seven bills in twenty
Speaker 2: five states right now that are trying to suppress freedom
Speaker 2: to invest, that are trying to tell us how to think.
Speaker 2: And the ramifications of those I can tell you the
Speaker 2: eighteen states that have adopted anti ESG legislation, all of
Speaker 2: their pension funds are underperforming versus the rest of the country,
Speaker 2: and significantly because they can't assess an address risk, their
Speaker 2: treasurers are unable to float municipal bud because all the
Speaker 2: banks have been banned. So Texas spend next to five
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars in the first eight months after SB
Speaker 2: thirteen was put in place just to get their municipal bonds.
Speaker 2: The Texas Chamber of Commerce, this is Exxon and Chevron,
Speaker 2: Conico Phillips are part of that. They reported that Texas
Speaker 2: has wasted six hundred and sixty eight million dollars and
Speaker 2: lost three thousand jobs directly resulting from SB thirteen. So
Speaker 2: these red states are harming their firefighters, their teachers, their
Speaker 2: police officers, their pension funds, they're harming all the citizens,
Speaker 2: wasting all these the tax money in these states, and
Speaker 2: yet it continues. And that's that's why about eighty percent
Speaker 2: of these bills get killed because they're so financially just
Speaker 2: disastrous for the states. But it's political theater, and these
Speaker 2: folks think that they're scoring points for passing this legislation.
Speaker 1: What have you seen in the wake of the SEC
Speaker 1: finally finalizing its climate risk disclosure guidelines and ultimately leaving
Speaker 1: Scope three out, which I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: characterized as them caving to pressure and this kind of
Speaker 1: relentless anti ESG campaign. So now that that's been chalked
Speaker 1: up as a win for the anti ESG folks, are
Speaker 1: you still seeing as much of a push at the
Speaker 1: state level to pass these laws and or these sorts
Speaker 1: of lawsuits against shareholders or do you think they're satisfied now?
Speaker 2: Oh, no, they're they're insatiable, They're they're just getting revved up.
Speaker 2: In fact, Leonard Leo just recently said we need to
Speaker 2: flood the zone with litigation. They're planning hundreds of lawsuits
Speaker 2: against corporations. These guys are anti business, anti freedom, anti capitalists.
Speaker 2: That was part of phase one. Now phase two is
Speaker 2: going to be this massive litigation. And also Leonard Leo's
Speaker 2: calling for more white men on boards. The number of
Speaker 2: white men on boards dropped from eighty two percent twenty
Speaker 2: twenty to seventy seven percent in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 2: that five percentage loss only have a super majority is
Speaker 2: considered undertennable.
Speaker 1: When you say that he's talking about flooding the zone
Speaker 1: with litigation, Is it more of these kinds of lawsuits
Speaker 1: like what Exxon filed against our Juna.
Speaker 2: No, it's more like filing suits against corporations, for instance,
Speaker 2: corporations that have diversity on their board or diversity in
Speaker 2: their workforce.
Speaker 1: So like a lack of fiduciary responsibility kind of thing
Speaker 1: where they're like not supposedly not making enough money because
Speaker 1: they're too worried about wokeness. And that sort of argument
Speaker 1: is that, well.
Speaker 2: There's a k named ed Blum, Edward Blum who filed
Speaker 2: the action the Supreme Court, who's.
Speaker 1: Now very familiar, very familiar.
Speaker 2: Yes, what they're asserting is that that if a company
Speaker 2: has a diversity, equity and Inclusion department, if they have
Speaker 2: a diverse workforce, that they're going to be suing them
Speaker 2: because they say that is not in that's not for
Speaker 2: short term profit maximization. Now, as you, SAI did a study.
Speaker 2: We looked at the EEO one reports. That's the Equal
Speaker 2: Employment Opportunity reports of You looked at six thousand EO
Speaker 2: one reports, so sixteen hundred companies over five years. These
Speaker 2: are the reports that every company puts out to the
Speaker 2: federal government about their diversity. It's by each you know,
Speaker 2: you have management, and you've got all the different groups
Speaker 2: within the company, and then you've got all the protected classes.
Speaker 2: And what we found is a statistically significant correlation showing
Speaker 2: that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance on eight key
Speaker 2: financial metrics, including ten year stock return, return on capital,
Speaker 2: return on investment, basically every way that you would judge finance.
Speaker 2: So if a company does not have diversity, they're actually
Speaker 2: in breach of their fiduciary duty. Now they're going to
Speaker 2: try to lip it, and that's why they've been doing
Speaker 2: all these webinars about don't believe data. There's actually a
Speaker 2: whole thing around. It's called DEI lies and at you
Speaker 2: should not believe. I mean they have a guy from
Speaker 2: the London School of Economics. Literally he's I've now seen
Speaker 2: two of his webinars saying don't trust any data that
Speaker 2: there's yeah, that there's that it's all biased. That don't
Speaker 2: like basically, don't trust math, don't trust statistics. Just don't
Speaker 2: trust data because there's what they call confirmation bias. Now,
Speaker 2: I know my team that analyzed these one point three
Speaker 2: million data points over took over a year. There are
Speaker 2: two PhDs statisticians and I can tell you this data
Speaker 2: is real and if you do not have a diverse
Speaker 2: management team, you are not going to be You're going
Speaker 2: to be underperforming. In fact, we actually found that all
Speaker 2: white management teams underperform. So if you want to increase
Speaker 2: the output of your financial investments, look for diverse management
Speaker 2: teams that overweight them underweight the all white management teams
Speaker 2: and you will outperform the BENU. We've seen this now,
Speaker 2: it's clear, it's over five years and statistically significant.
Speaker 1: I know you know Ed Bloom is a fan of
Speaker 1: these cases, arguing that any kind of diversity approach is
Speaker 1: violating the equal protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment. Are
Speaker 1: they taking that kind of an approach here as well,
Speaker 1: or just saying that the short term financial gains don't
Speaker 1: just don't take any approach.
Speaker 2: They have no principles, They are just trying to achieve
Speaker 2: an end. And also it's also you know what was
Speaker 2: his name, Stephen Miller? Who?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just and he just got a grant of
Speaker 2: I believe twenty seven million dollars from one of these
Speaker 2: right wing billionaires. I mean, this is all funded by
Speaker 2: just a handful like three or four right wing billionaires
Speaker 2: and oil barons. And they're funding Leonard Leo, They're funding
Speaker 2: the Federal Society, American Enterprise, Heritage Foundation, ALEC. All these
Speaker 2: groups are all funded together. So it's really a coord
Speaker 2: and needed, concerted effort. But getting back to the SEC,
Speaker 2: because it's really important, an important point. You have to
Speaker 2: take the SEC climate disclosure rule in context of why
Speaker 2: was the SEC created in nineteen thirty four, Well, there
Speaker 2: was no financial information available and that's when the stock
Speaker 2: market crashed and the Great Depression happened, and they said,
Speaker 2: you know what, we need standardized financial metrics, we need
Speaker 2: every company to report in the same way. We needed
Speaker 2: verified by a third party, and we needed in a
Speaker 2: standardized format so we have comparability, like you can look
Speaker 2: at a financial report from any two companies and since
Speaker 2: same format. Well ninety years later, twenty twenty four, they've
Speaker 2: come to realize that these financial statements are not the
Speaker 2: only information you need to determine if a company is
Speaker 2: going to be outperforming, if it's going to be successful,
Speaker 2: and how to compare it to its peers. There's other
Speaker 2: things like I just mentioned. Do they have diversity, that's
Speaker 2: definitely a big one. What do they do about their
Speaker 2: supply chains, how do they treat their employees? All these things.
Speaker 2: You know, companies that treat their employees well have much
Speaker 2: better retention, they spend less money on training and on recruitment,
Speaker 2: They will outperform, and so investors need to know these things.
Speaker 2: So what the Climate Disclosure Rule said is that these
Speaker 2: material risk factors need to be disclosed accurately, need to
Speaker 2: be verified by a third party in a standardized format. Now,
Speaker 2: the first one of these factors was carbon emissions. So overall,
Speaker 2: the big takeaway here is, Okay, you've got the financial metrics,
Speaker 2: and now you've got all of the material metrics. That's
Speaker 2: a big again philosophical shift that investors need more information
Speaker 2: to make to do their fiduciary duty and make good
Speaker 2: informed decisions. That's the real takeaway. Now. The fact that
Speaker 2: they don't use Scope three means well, we only get
Speaker 2: to look at twenty percent of the emissions instead of
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. Be much better look at one hundred percent. Also,
Speaker 2: they gave the companies the ability to decide what is material,
Speaker 2: even though the Supreme Court defines materiality as what a
Speaker 2: shareholder needs to make a buy, hold or sell decision.
Speaker 2: So those are the problematic parts of the new rule,
Speaker 2: But the fact that the rule exists, that we're now
Speaker 2: going to start to see standardized disclosure rules particually important
Speaker 2: because ultimately, right now, companies are just disclosing information that
Speaker 2: could be completely misleading, and you know companies Sustanalytics MSCAW,
Speaker 2: they scrape them up and they put them in a
Speaker 2: database and everybody thinks there's truth behind them when there isn't.
Speaker 2: But here's the other good news. In Europe, they've got
Speaker 2: CSRD and companies are going to have to be disclosing
Speaker 2: accurately for that so any multinationals already going to be
Speaker 2: starting to disclose in the next eighteen months. That is
Speaker 2: pretty much going to help investors to make the right decisions.
Speaker 2: And also companies that do disclose voluntarily, accurately have it
Speaker 2: verified in a sandrised format are going to get a
Speaker 2: lot more investors because well, if you're an investor, you're
Speaker 2: going to say, oh, well, this company doesn't have anything
Speaker 2: to hide, and we have an honest relationship, that there
Speaker 2: is trust between the company and its shareholders. Now, remember,
Speaker 2: the board reports to the shareholders. The shareholders are the
Speaker 2: ultimate owners of these companies, and that is a critical
Speaker 2: thing that people don't realize, or maybe they realize it
Speaker 2: in the background, but that that is the core of
Speaker 2: the property rights associated with owning a shareff stock. So
Speaker 2: while we're disappointed that they don't have Scope three, and
Speaker 2: we're very disappointed that they gave the companies the right
Speaker 2: to decide what is material, and also the fact that
Speaker 2: that's not lea to do that that Supreme Court says
Speaker 2: it's up to shareholders to decide that there is this
Speaker 2: new structure that says disclose accurately, verified by a third
Speaker 2: party and in a standardized format means, oh, now we've
Speaker 2: got audited financials and soon we will have audited sustainability
Speaker 2: and materiality, and that is a critical shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I won't ask you to speak for the entire
Speaker 1: climate movement, but how is that as you so responding
Speaker 1: to this campaign, this onslaught.
Speaker 2: We just keep doing what we do. We're trying not
Speaker 2: let it distract us. We filed eighty nine shareholder resolutions
Speaker 2: this year, which is down a little bit. We filed
Speaker 2: one hundred and eleven last year. We're having continued having
Speaker 2: good relationships with all the companies we engage. So here's
Speaker 2: the thing. We do a lot of research and then
Speaker 2: we bring the research to the companies and we sit
Speaker 2: down and have these engagements. We say, hey, look, you
Speaker 2: know you scored a seven on racial justice. You're competitors
Speaker 2: scored an eleven. Here's here's a better business plan of
Speaker 2: how you can outperform. And most of the time, I
Speaker 2: mean most of the companies say thank you. You guys
Speaker 2: are like amazing, You're like McKinsey for free. Let's go
Speaker 2: become better businesses. And last year we had two hundred
Speaker 2: and ten engagements. Ninety nine companies said thank you. One
Speaker 2: hundred and eleven. We filed resolutions to escalate it, and
Speaker 2: once we did that, fifty six said, you know what,
Speaker 2: if you withdraw, we'll agree to certain terms. We'll agree
Speaker 2: to start to implement this stuff. It's only about thirty
Speaker 2: percent go to a vote, and when you go to
Speaker 2: a vote, those are non binding, and then you sit
Speaker 2: down and go, hey, thirty percent of your shareholders think
Speaker 2: this is important, and the companies generally do unless they're
Speaker 2: an oil company, and then they just basically ignore their shareholders.
Speaker 2: So we're just doing business as usual. The companies are
Speaker 2: adopting better business practices because they can see that it's
Speaker 2: better for their businesses. Now the litigation, let's getting back
Speaker 2: to Exon against our JUNA. First of all, the judge
Speaker 2: to just dismiss it because Exon already won. Exon said,
Speaker 2: what we want in this lawsuit is for our junior
Speaker 2: to withdraw their resolution and for us to not put
Speaker 2: it on our proxy statement. Okay, done, It wasn't on
Speaker 2: their proxy statement. What was on their proxy statement though,
Speaker 2: is that they mentioned, as you said thirteen times, referencing
Speaker 2: that shareholders should not have these rights. So they are
Speaker 2: fundamentally attacking this idea of property rights, which is such
Speaker 2: a fundamental thing for libertarians and for the conservatives. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of amazing to me that any of them
Speaker 2: would even you know, sanction this. But there they are
Speaker 2: doing it. So you know, we're continuing business as usual.
Speaker 2: Companies are quietly adopting the good business practices that we're suggesting.
Speaker 2: And you know, some people call it green hushing. It
Speaker 2: used to be that companies would take a victory lap
Speaker 2: say hey, you know what, we're adopting this new DEI
Speaker 2: policy or this new climate policy because they wanted to
Speaker 2: see we're outperforming our competitors in terms of reducing risk
Speaker 2: for all stakeholders and opening up creating opportunity. Now they're
Speaker 2: much more quiet about it, but they're still getting it
Speaker 2: done because that's what good management does. And I mean,
Speaker 2: here's the thing. Good managers assess and address risk. Good
Speaker 2: investors address an assess risk. The eighteen states where it's
Speaker 2: illegal to assess an address risk, they are suffering and
Speaker 2: because they are not, it's ill literally illegal. So you
Speaker 2: think about it, why are their pension funds underperforming? Well,
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to assess an address risk. They're not
Speaker 2: allowed to invest in companies that have a climate transition plan,
Speaker 2: which are generally the most profitable companies in the world.
Speaker 2: I recently had a debate in Arizona and the Treasurer
Speaker 2: of the Arizona Kimberly Yee, was debating anti ESG. I
Speaker 2: was debating pro ESG, and I asked her about SB
Speaker 2: eleven ninety five in Arizona. Now, if it goes into effect,
Speaker 2: literally the state cannot do any business with any company
Speaker 2: with a climate transition plan. And I pointed out to
Speaker 2: her that half of her portfolio was companies that have
Speaker 2: a climate transition plan and that she would have to
Speaker 2: sell half of her portfolio, and I asked her what's
Speaker 2: her plan. I also pointed out that all the banks
Speaker 2: that are currently funding their bonds, she won't be able
Speaker 2: to do business with them. They'll all be banned. What's
Speaker 2: she going to do and how much more interest is
Speaker 2: she going to be paying because you can't get a
Speaker 2: lot of banks to bid on the bonds. I also
Speaker 2: pointed out that all of her bonds have risk assessment
Speaker 2: for climate, for water, for air, that she would have
Speaker 2: to take out of those bond issuances, which means very
Speaker 2: few people like reinsurers will not allow anyone to to
Speaker 2: bid and to fund these bonds. And I said, what's
Speaker 2: your plan? And she didn't have an answer. She said that, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's about freedom and ESG is taking away
Speaker 2: our freedom. And I was like, no, actually, anti ESG
Speaker 2: is saying that we can't assess and address risk. You're
Speaker 2: taking away our freedom to invest. And so it was
Speaker 2: a very interesting just to hear her like she hadn't
Speaker 2: actually done the homework and the Arizona State Legislature. I said,
Speaker 2: you must have prepared a report for the Arizona State
Speaker 2: Legislature showing them all these financial risks. She no, she
Speaker 2: had not in r did she was she even aware
Speaker 2: that there were these financial risks.
Speaker 1: So it's political fear and she's super involved in the
Speaker 1: State Financial Officers Foundation to write.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's the treasurer and she's very vocal and yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One other thing we haven't mentioned is the fact that
Speaker 2: the House Judiciary Committee is investigating, as you sew in
Speaker 2: thirteen other organizations for anti trust activities.
Speaker 1: Right, I saw this, So.
Speaker 2: We'll tell you a little bit about that if you like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please, I know that I did a story last
Speaker 1: year on just on the Texas Public Policy Foundation and
Speaker 1: the stuff that they were doing to try to push
Speaker 1: that whole legal theory forward that ESG in general is
Speaker 1: anti trust in some way, which every lawyer I talked
Speaker 1: to said was bunk. But you know that doesn't stopped
Speaker 1: them from moving forward with it to.
Speaker 2: The House because the House could frame it as we're
Speaker 2: writing new law, and therefore we need to do discovery
Speaker 2: to write this new law. Right, So we got a
Speaker 2: letter at last August saying that, as you say, is
Speaker 2: being investigated along with you know, other groups including Black Rock, Vanguard,
Speaker 2: State Street, ISS, Glass Lewis, CalPERS, the largest pension fund
Speaker 2: in the country, g FANS, which is five hundred of
Speaker 2: the world's biggest banks in forty five countries, ENZA, which
Speaker 2: is the net zero asset managers. I'm all told the
Speaker 2: fourteen groups that are being investigated have a total assets
Speaker 2: under management of one hundred and fifty trillion dollars. We're
Speaker 2: talking about five times the GDP of the United States.
Speaker 2: We're talking about one and a half times global GDP.
Speaker 2: So basically the entire global economy is being investigated by
Speaker 2: the House Judiciary Committee for Anti trust Activities, saying that
Speaker 2: that shareholders having a conversation is collusion, and that by
Speaker 2: getting companies to reduce their carbon emissions, we're infringing on
Speaker 2: the freedom of all Americans. So that's what they put
Speaker 2: forward to as their legislative purpose, and so well, we
Speaker 2: had a lot of questions about it. First of all,
Speaker 2: we're in nonprofit, so how could we be doing anti
Speaker 2: trust activity. We don't have a product. I'm not fixing
Speaker 2: any prices because we don't have any prices. And so
Speaker 2: we wrote them a letter saying could you clarify? They
Speaker 2: sent us a subpoena and said, just turn over all
Speaker 2: your documents anything to do with carbon or with net zero,
Speaker 2: all your documents from twenty sixteen. So you know, we
Speaker 2: gave them twelve thousand pages of documents that we're mostly
Speaker 2: our our shareholder resolutions, our exemp solicitations, our reports that
Speaker 2: we felt satisfied their legislative purpose, that we're pertinent to
Speaker 2: their legislative purpose. They said, not enough, We need to
Speaker 2: hear from you. We come on in to we want
Speaker 2: to have an interview. So we sent our chief counsel
Speaker 2: and she went in and had eight and a half
Speaker 2: hours of being interviewed and answer all their questions, they
Speaker 2: said not enough. So I said, okay, I'll come in
Speaker 2: voluntarily at the end of March. And so within a
Speaker 2: couple of days they sent us a letter saying we're
Speaker 2: going to hold you in contempt of Congress. So our
Speaker 2: lawyers said, well, if you're going to hold them in contempt,
Speaker 2: then we can't answer questions around document production because that's
Speaker 2: what they were saying. That was the contempt that we
Speaker 2: hadn't given them enough documents, So we can't answer answer
Speaker 2: questions around that because that would be self incrimination. So
Speaker 2: they immediately sent a subpoena that said show up on
Speaker 2: the same day you've already said you're coming. Odd. So
Speaker 2: I showed up on the day that I said I
Speaker 2: was coming, and they proceeded to ask me five and
Speaker 2: a half hours of questions. Most of it was really
Speaker 2: kind of explaining to them how capitalism worked. They didn't
Speaker 2: quite understand that the boards of directors report to their
Speaker 2: shareholders that when three new directors were added to the
Speaker 2: Exon board or were replaced on the ex On board
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one, it was because Excell had been
Speaker 2: losing money. Their stock had been dropping for ten years
Speaker 2: they'd been thrown off the Dow, and what's a shareholder
Speaker 2: to do, like, of course you're going to replace an
Speaker 2: incompetent board, a board that had no capital discipline, Like,
Speaker 2: of course you would do that, and that's just that's
Speaker 2: our right. They did not like that at all. So
Speaker 2: it was mostly talking about that kind of thing where
Speaker 2: I just kept having to explain how the power structure
Speaker 2: of capitalism worked. And so now they keep telling us
Speaker 2: that they're going to be holding us a contempt. We
Speaker 2: keep saying, we've given you all the pertinent documents, we
Speaker 2: cooperated completely with the committee, and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: Now it's in their court. What's interesting is just how
Speaker 2: they are essentially trying to intimidate shareholders from essentially doing
Speaker 2: what is not only our legal rights, but our fiduciary
Speaker 2: obligation to get the companies that we own to perform better,
Speaker 2: to have less risk. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I know we talked about some of the state laws.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the haggard Y
Speaker 1: Bill and what that is aiming to do and where
Speaker 1: it's at at the moment. He introduced it in February
Speaker 1: February first, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: And there's a companion bill in the how it's called
Speaker 3: the Respite for Businesses Act, and its respite stands for
Speaker 3: rejecting extremist shareholder proposals that inhibit andport enterprise.
Speaker 2: Right. Look, as you said, it's been doing this for
Speaker 2: thirty two years, and we work with groups like all
Speaker 2: the faith based groups that have been doing it for
Speaker 2: fifty years. And every shareholder resolution that we file is
Speaker 2: about helping a company to reduce material risk for all
Speaker 2: stakeholders and to create opportunities. It's helping them assess and
Speaker 2: address risk that they might not see. And the fact
Speaker 2: that they see this as some sort of a threat.
Speaker 2: When seventy percent of the companies we engage say thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you for caring enough to bring us good data
Speaker 2: and good ideas, and thirty percent go to a vote,
Speaker 2: and then almost all of those then after the vote
Speaker 2: say thank you for bringing us good ideas. You're making
Speaker 2: us a better company. So it shows just how out
Speaker 2: of touch they are and how much this is just
Speaker 2: political theater. What they're trying to do here is trying
Speaker 2: to take away shareholders' property rights. This is about participatory democracy.
Speaker 2: This is about capitalism. And this is about freedom. And
Speaker 2: it seems like mister Haggerty does not like those things
Speaker 2: and doesn't quite understand that that is how the system works,
Speaker 2: and it works quite well. I got to say, these
Speaker 2: are non binding resolutions. I mean, we have ninety six
Speaker 2: percent votes in the company doesn't have to do it now.
Speaker 2: In those cases and the company says, no, we're not
Speaker 2: going to do anything, well, then the shareholders go, you're
Speaker 2: not listening to us, and therefore we're going to vote
Speaker 2: against this board. We don't have confidence in this board.
Speaker 2: We're going to vote and no confidence vote, and oftentimes
Speaker 2: that leads to running new board candidates, often much more competent.
Speaker 2: I mean. Interesting thing about the Engine one directors at Exxon.
Speaker 2: There was no one on the Exxon board in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one that had any energy experience, none of them. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 2: two of the four Engine I directors had experience working
Speaker 2: with an energy company, and there's a lot of outside influence.
Speaker 2: But since the day, since May of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Excellon stock has done pretty much nothing but go up
Speaker 2: after a ten year decline. So anyone who says these
Speaker 2: directors harmed the company, well, first of all, ninety one
Speaker 2: percent of the shareholders voted for some of them and
Speaker 2: been re elected every year after, and the company has
Speaker 2: done much better financially since then. They're just not looking
Speaker 2: at the data. But again they don't necessarily like data either.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is, you know I talked about in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen there was this big decision on a new philosophy.
Speaker 2: Well right after that, the Catholic Church they came up
Speaker 2: and said, you know what, this papal law that gave
Speaker 2: basically all the explorer ships would put a priest in it,
Speaker 2: and it was called the doc of Discovery. You get
Speaker 2: to a new land and you claim it for for
Speaker 2: the church, and then you could do anything. The people
Speaker 2: there were, could be subjugated, could be enslaved, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Just kind of quietly, the Catholic Church said, you know,
Speaker 2: by the way, that law is no longer in force.
Speaker 2: I saw that he'd got no attention in the press.
Speaker 2: But that is a major philosophical shift. That is like
Speaker 2: literally they just announced on it was March twenty third,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, that colonialism is no longer law. It's no
Speaker 2: longer legal, you know, And kind of no one noticed it,
Speaker 2: but we're seeing this level of a philosophical shift. Now,
Speaker 2: we've got a long way to go to get to
Speaker 2: a glide path into this new paradigm, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of reparations that have to happen to rebalance. But
Speaker 2: the folks who have been in power for all of
Speaker 2: this time, they're not liking it. And his thing. You know,
Speaker 2: when you have all this power and you see it
Speaker 2: potentially going away, like the eighty percent of white males
Speaker 2: on boards to seventy seven, that little bit of change
Speaker 2: is seen as outrageous and it's a massive attack on
Speaker 2: the structure that we know and love and have for
Speaker 2: you know, for centuries. Whereas the people who haven't had
Speaker 2: any power are seeing like, oh, I'm having a little
Speaker 2: bit more power there. So the pushback is very intense.
Speaker 2: But you know what, you cannot stop market forces. You
Speaker 2: can try. It's a ripple that's become a wave and
Speaker 2: is soon to be a tsunami, and they can stand
Speaker 2: out there and hold their hand up against the tsunami,
Speaker 2: but they will just be swept away by it. And
Speaker 2: that is what Leonard Leo knows. That is what they
Speaker 2: are desperately trying to slow down. They know they can't
Speaker 2: stop it, but they're trying to slow it down as
Speaker 2: much as possible. And it has to do with the
Speaker 2: way the oil companies control well, you know, all the
Speaker 2: governments and that right, everyone is beholden to them. Well,
Speaker 2: guess what the internal combustion engine is going obsolete.
Speaker 1: Interesting data point this week. I think it was just
Speaker 1: today or yesterday the Wall Street Journal called oil and
Speaker 1: gas a sunsetting industry.
Speaker 2: Well it is. I mean it's the Kodac and I
Speaker 2: often say, you know, shareholders went to Kodak and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we got to think about think about our business model.
Speaker 2: We got to think about digital photography and they said, no,
Speaker 2: we make films. And we went to blockbustering. We said,
Speaker 2: you know, this internet thing, it's not just a fad.
Speaker 2: Really look at Netflix and they go, no, you know,
Speaker 2: we have brick and mortar and we have these vhs. Right,
Speaker 2: same thing with Excellon. It's been again twenty seven resolutions
Speaker 2: over ten years saying let's think of ourselves as an
Speaker 2: energy company, not an oil company. I mean we've come
Speaker 2: up with really innovative resolutions that were trying to reward
Speaker 2: give bonuses to executives that actually started to transition the company.
Speaker 2: We had this idea that rather than base bonuses for
Speaker 2: executives on what's called barrel replacement. You sell a barrel,
Speaker 2: you got to go discover a new barrel, but rather
Speaker 2: on BTUs on British thermal units or energy. So if
Speaker 2: in each barrel of oil or each unit of gas,
Speaker 2: all the fossil fuels have BTU equivalents, So you just
Speaker 2: do the math and you just go oh and so,
Speaker 2: and you report to the SEC both your barrel replacement
Speaker 2: and your energy replacement, and then you can see, oh,
Speaker 2: look they replace seventy percent of their barrels, but thirty
Speaker 2: percent is but they have one hundred percent energy replacement.
Speaker 2: That's a company that's transitioning. I want to overweight them
Speaker 2: in my portfolio. And we actually talked. It was interesting.
Speaker 2: We have these meetings with chevrons. We fold this resolution.
Speaker 2: I remember sitting in this meeting and we explained it
Speaker 2: to them, and these executives at a high level people said,
Speaker 2: like CFO level people said, you know, we're going to
Speaker 2: make a lot of money, like I'm going to get
Speaker 2: really rich doing this, and we're like, yeah, exactly, you
Speaker 2: guys should get rich transitioning this company. They were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's maybe let's go together to the SEC and talk
Speaker 2: about this. We're like, that's cool, we'll do that anyway,
Speaker 2: Then they invited ex on Alan and somehow by the
Speaker 2: end of that week the whole thing was put the
Speaker 2: kabash on it. Interesting again, we're a shareholders trying to
Speaker 2: figure out how do we make this company viable in
Speaker 2: the long term because we don't think they are long term.
Speaker 2: Their viability is seriously compromised in the long term.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, is there any kind of either legislative or
Speaker 1: judicial approach to batting back some of this stuff? Is
Speaker 1: suing them back or trying to propose policy that would
Speaker 1: tamp down on some of this anti ESG fervor, or
Speaker 1: people just kind of trying to ignore it and get
Speaker 1: on with their day.
Speaker 2: Well, people aren't ignoring it, which you're seeing at the
Speaker 2: state level, like in South Dakota, for instance, they're anti ESG.
Speaker 2: Bill lost I think it was ninety to three. That's
Speaker 2: because the South Dakota bankers got in and said this
Speaker 2: is going to crush our state, this is going to
Speaker 2: just harm us. So you're seeing at the state level
Speaker 2: they're realizing the economic harm, which is why about eighty
Speaker 2: percent of these bills don't make it. And then the
Speaker 2: ones that do, some of them are specifically illegal, and
Speaker 2: it's been very hard to find plaintiffs willing to stand
Speaker 2: up to them. So right now it's a work in
Speaker 2: process to actually push back in terms of suing. Edward Blum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is he actually the one that's bringing some of
Speaker 1: these cases, the Leonard leode ones? Is it Blum and
Speaker 1: his crew?
Speaker 2: Well, he brought the case against Fearless Fund. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that's the fun you know, that gives grants to black
Speaker 2: women entrepreneurs and you know, and as a VC. So
Speaker 2: he's doing that. And then there's Miller who's doing his
Speaker 2: stuff at Target, you know where he'll basically, you know,
Speaker 2: create a hate mob against LGBTQ and then he'll sue
Speaker 2: the company for having a hate mob. So there's those troublemakers.
Speaker 2: And again Miller just got twenty seven million dollars to
Speaker 2: run more litigation from I think it's the Bradley Fund,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 1: The Bradley Foundation. Okay, this is wild because I did
Speaker 1: a two year project looking at the all the anti
Speaker 1: IQUA cases, the anti Indian Child Welfare Act cases that
Speaker 1: were mostly being they were being argued by Gibson Dunn,
Speaker 1: which is why I got interested in it because I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, that's Chevron's law firm. Why
Speaker 1: are they involved in this child welfare case? And the
Speaker 1: more we looked at it, it was it was a
Speaker 1: whole thing that had been started by the Bradley Foundation,
Speaker 1: who have also like funded Bloom for years too. Those
Speaker 1: guys don't get as much attention and as they deserve.
Speaker 2: No, no they don't. But I mean this is the
Speaker 2: you know, I call them the oil barons and right
Speaker 2: wing billionaires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty small group, but they.
Speaker 2: Have a very small, very small group. This is the
Speaker 2: regressive elites, if you will, And they just want to
Speaker 2: kind of go back to I mean, look what's going
Speaker 2: on in Arizona eighteen sixty four. That was a pretty
Speaker 2: good year.
Speaker 1: That's seriously what they want. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: Leonard Leo has basically said that at various points, like
Speaker 1: you know, pre Lockner and Industrial Revolution kind of days.
Speaker 2: I don't know, well, certainly certainly back to the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies and Milton Friedman. But yeah, here's the thing. The
Speaker 2: University of Chicago I think it's the Freedman Becker School,
Speaker 2: which was, by the way, was renamed because the universe
Speaker 2: of Chicago professors did not want to have it just
Speaker 2: be the Milton Friedman School because they disagree with his theories.
Speaker 2: They're teaching stakeholder capitalism. Why, because it works, because your
Speaker 2: companies out perform because you take care of your employees,
Speaker 2: When you take care of your customers, you know the
Speaker 2: communities where you operate and your supply chain, you are
Speaker 2: going to be a better company that's going to have
Speaker 2: long term sustainable growth that it's going to be good
Speaker 2: for all your shareholders. So there's just no question about that.
Speaker 2: I often cite an example of if you've got a
Speaker 2: company and it's dumping toxic waste into the local river
Speaker 2: from your factory. Yeah, okay, you don't have to pay
Speaker 2: for water treatment and you've saved a little bit of
Speaker 2: money there. That looks good the first month, But then
Speaker 2: your own employees are drinking the water and they're sick,
Speaker 2: they're not showing up at work, and then you get
Speaker 2: sued and your brand is now tainted. Okay, you've got
Speaker 2: such a deep economic problems it's going to last you
Speaker 2: for years. That the trade off is not worth it. Again,
Speaker 2: short term ism long term, and people are just thinking
Speaker 2: much longer term now because the investors in their companies
Speaker 2: are much longer term. When somebody pass a law that
Speaker 2: says it's illegal to look at risk, then you really
Speaker 2: want to look at the risk and say, what are
Speaker 2: they hiding? Now? What they're hiding is that the oil
Speaker 2: companies are no longer viable. That is what they're hiding,
Speaker 2: and it's in plain sight and everyone knows it. But frankly,
Speaker 2: the Saudis keep it pumped up and people don't realize this.
Speaker 2: There's one hundred million people with ten trillion dollars of
Speaker 2: assets in four to one K plans that are invested
Speaker 2: in the entire extract of economy. If you're invested in Blackrock,
Speaker 2: you own Saudia Ramco. Saudia Ramco CEO is on their board.
Speaker 2: People don't know this. Now. Not only are you invested
Speaker 2: in in rainforest destruction and fossil fuels and private prisons,
Speaker 2: but you've handed off your right to vote to vanguard
Speaker 2: that votes with management ninety eight percent of the time.
Speaker 2: So we've all handed over all of our power. Our
Speaker 2: power is in our money and we've said oh okay
Speaker 2: in Vanguard, Yeah, you can do whatever you want to do,
Speaker 2: and all you have to do is, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like it's your money. The person who earns the money
Speaker 2: should decide how it is invested, and they can use
Speaker 2: it to capitalize a future that they want to live in.
Speaker 2: The person who owns the money should have the right
Speaker 2: to vote. They have the right to vote, but they
Speaker 2: should actually use it to express their values to the
Speaker 2: companies they own. It's so basic, and we're getting to
Speaker 2: the point now. It's a new thing called pass through voting.
Speaker 2: As you sow as four oh one k plan, we
Speaker 2: are literally piloting starting in a few weeks, we're all
Speaker 2: going to every employee, as you say, will be voting
Speaker 2: every one of our shares. So if we own a
Speaker 2: target date fund, that's two thousand companies or so, we're
Speaker 2: voting everything on everyone, and we're doing it with one click.
Speaker 2: We call it as you Vote, and we also offer
Speaker 2: this for free anyone who owns shares individually, Like if
Speaker 2: you just have if you're getting your proxy statements, your
Speaker 2: ballots into your inbox, literally one click, you can sign
Speaker 2: up for as you Vote and all those ballots going
Speaker 2: forward will be voted in an ESG aligned way according
Speaker 2: to our policy. That means you're voting against eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the CEO pay packages, you're voting against seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the board, you're voting for all the good shareholder resolutions,
Speaker 2: and you're voting against all the anti ESG resolutions, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, another that's another piece of the Leonard
Speaker 2: Leo puzzle is they're following these resolutions. They're calling them
Speaker 2: racial justice resolutions, but what they say is white men
Speaker 2: are discriminated against.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the reverse racism thing. They've been trying to
Speaker 1: make this argument since the nineties.
Speaker 2: The good news is they wouldn't be pushing back as
Speaker 2: hard if we weren't making progress, and we are making good,
Speaker 2: solid progress, and we have the market forces at our back,
Speaker 2: and they are trying to stop the unstoppable.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week. We'll be back with a
Speaker 1: few more episodes in our Real Free Speech Threat series
Speaker 1: over the next month or so. This episode was engineered
Speaker 1: by Peter Duff. Her music is Bird in the Hand
Speaker 1: by Foreknown. You can find a transcript of this interview
Speaker 1: and lots of other related articles and podcast episodes on
Speaker 1: our website at drilled dot media, and you can follow
Speaker 1: us across social media at we Are Drilled or I'm
Speaker 1: at Amy Westerveldt. Thanks for listening and we'll see you
Speaker 1: next time.