ESG

We take a look at our 2021 ranked companies that had controversies across all of our various stakeholders to show that, unsurprisingly, companies with fewer controversies slightly outperform those with more.

Here are five of our most viewed ESG-focused features from 2020.

Will the social element of ESG remain on both the American public’s and professional investors’ minds as we enter 2021

Public and private sectors are locked in a constant struggle, with the pendulum swinging between regulation and taxation on the one side, and free enterprise and profits on the other. For the good of the country, this has to change.

How companies and investors can lead in building a more just and inclusive economy that works for all Americans.

As I write this, the outcome of the Presidential election is still on a razor’s edge. Whoever emerges victorious will face a divided Congress and a country riven by political discord and scarred by an electoral process that has pushed us to the limit.

We revisit a past Chart of the Week to show that the companies that support their workers continue to outperform the market.

In this week’s Chart of the Week, we take a look at the JUST Industry leaders across our universe to examine their strong outperformance in this economic recovery.

We sat down with two of the ESG’s most prominent leaders –John Goldstein, the head of the Sustainable Finance Group at Goldman Sachs and Megan Starr, the Global Head of Impact for The Carlyle Group, to discuss the future of ESG. 

Companies that support customers by producing non-harmful and quality products, emphasizing privacy, using fair pricing, offering equal treatment, and more, outperform their competitors by 20.7% .

Arguments in support of shareholder primacy and against stakeholder capitalism are out of sync with the voice of the American public, institutional investors, shareholders, and corporations themselves. 

In light of Labor Day this past Monday, we revisit a chart from early June to evaluate how companies’ treatment of their workers continues to affect financial performance throughout 2020.

For Labor Day, we revisit our Chart of the Week from earlier this summer to reevaluate how companies who fully disclose their EEO-1 reports have performed throughout the trailing three months. 

This week, we explore the risk profile of more just companies in comparison to less just ones, and show that JUST companies have less volatility.

This week, we dive into the history of our JUST Rankings and evaluate how America’s Most JUST Companies have performed on a cumulative basis since inception, finding that the top four quintiles as the top quintile has outperformed the bottom quintile by 29.9% cumulatively.

Providing hazard pay is stakeholder capitalism in action

As our economy sees increasing uncertainty after the market recovery in Q2, this week’s analysis dives into our 2020 Rankings to evaluate median maximum drawdowns by quintile.

If one thing has become clear this year, it’s that corporate stakeholder performance claims – on COVID-19, racial equity, and other “S” issues – must be backed by real action.

This week we look at severe communities controversies within the companies we cover, and see a significant outperformance for those who don’t have at least one severe controversy.

This week, we double down on employee compensation and dive into our “Pays a Fair Wage” metric to showcase how companies’ wages differ across various job titles when compared to industry peers.

The DOL has stated that ESG funds are “vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan.” We completely disagree – here’s why.

On July 27, JUST hosted a discussion with representatives from two of America’s largest pension funds and Bloomberg’s chief diversity reporter on why disclosing workforce demographic data is a crucial first step toward addressing racial inequity in corporate America. 

Last month, the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed a new investment duties rule that would essentially keep ESG funds out of retirement accounts. Everything I’ve seen throughout my career shows that such a move would hurt investors.

Read the last JUST Report inside, and sign up to receive the full reports directly in your inbox!

As we prepare our annual rankings, we are considering a new way that companies might reduce their environmental impact – the reduction of air travel.