Recently California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) – whose former board president, Priya Mathur, was discarded as a board member by a landslide vote of 57% to 43% – signed a letter asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to develop metrics for requiring listed companies to report on their compliance with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards that presumably would be set by the SEC.
What a stick in the eye of the more than one-million beneficiaries of the almost $400 billion pension system, as she unceremoniously departs, after leading an organization that left billions of dollars in out-performance on the table due to pervious political investing.
The role and responsibility of a fiduciary is not to invest with a personal political agenda, nor is it to impose their personal vision on what types of companies to invest in or not, including tobacco, alcohol, gambling, energy, private prisons, and others. For almost 1000 years, fiduciary duty has meant one thing: investing other people’s money for their (retirement) benefit and security.
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