by Martin Lipton, Adam O. Emmerich, Kevin S. Schwartz, Sabastian V. Niles, and Anna M. D’Ginto.

Over the past decade, investors, companies, and commentators have increasingly accepted and adopted stakeholder governance as the way to pursue the proper purpose of the corporation and have embraced consideration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in corporate decision-making toward that end. But an emerging movement opposed to any consideration, at all, of ESG factors threatens to erase the gains that have been made over the past ten years and revert to the outdated view that the purpose of a company is solely to maximize short-term shareholder profits.

This debate is playing out very publicly, with politicians at the highest levels of state and federal government publicly staking out positions on ESG and the extent to which it should (or should not) be considered by asset managers; through regulation and law; and in boardrooms across the country and around the world. At one extreme, critics of ESG are dismissing any consideration of the long-term impact of environmental or social risk on a company as “woke” capitalism, to be condemned, if not outlawed. (See Bloomberg, Populist House Republicans Picking a Fight With US Business Over ‘Woke Capitalism’ (Nov. 27, 2022).) At the same time, attacks from the other end of the spectrum condemn board consideration of ESG in a stakeholder governance model as insufficiently prescriptive. Yet neither view, attempting to politicize the role of companies and their boards, grapples adequately with the real meaning of ESG and stakeholder governance and the role of these concepts in the decision-making process of corporate boards and management.
Continue reading →