Hot Seat: ESG investing

Only a year ago, finance executives were waxing lyrical about environmental, social and governance investing, or ESG, a strategy that weighs risks from societal problems such as climate change and inequality and spots ways to profit from addressing them.

The ESG label was added to everything from mom-and-pop funds to complex Wall Street securities worth trillions of dollars.

These days executives are less eager to talk about the strategy. In the US last year, prominent Republicans mounted an attack on ESG, saying it’s promoted by radicals on the left. Exhibit A of the trend is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who just last month pulled $2 billion of his state’s funds from BlackRock Inc., Wall Street’s biggest proponent of ESG.