Is stronger, ESG performers correlated with lower risk and greater resilience? Increasingly, we hear claims that incorporating ESG not only allows investors to layer a social return on the financial return, it also reduces financial risk. There have been claims made by ESG advocates, some supported by important practical experience and recent academic research, others not. The latest phenomenon is governments jumping into this debate in a big way, including recently the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US. As well as the Federal Reserve. Also, governments and regulatory bodies in Europe have taken a worldwide lead in making companies quantify and report so called ESG risks. One of the dominant ideas in the idea that ESG and impact orientation reducing financial risk, is that it avoids risky industries in particular. For example, heavy industry or the carbon industry, especially when energy prices have downside volatility. The conundrum that we face is that traditional financial theory says where there is a lower risk, there might be lower expected return. And the advancing research into ESG, at the same time points out that companies and municipalities and other bodies that are exposed. For example, to climate risk actually have to pay a premium in the pricing of their investments. So, we have to sort out this notion of potential exposure to the downside and the potential concomitant risk premium. In returns with the idea that avoiding those risks on average generates higher returns. When looking at regulations requiring company ESG disclosures, we find that some of the risk of being required or which may be required, are increasing in number. Companies can also disclose voluntarily of course, and many do climate risk, workforce diversity, executive compensation, political lobbying, workplace practices. Including potential antipathy toward unions or the positive use of sweatshops are just examples. Climate change may be the biggest of all. Net zero carbon emissions by 2050 has become the semi-official global goal, to limit the effects of climate change. Many investors have adopted it, including endowments, foundations and even large pension plans and some sovereign wealth funds. Even more investors, in fact, managing a majority of global invested capital have adopted the UN Principles of Responsible Investment. Or UNPRI, which committed them to acting responsibly about climate change. At the highest level, ESG risk on climate change is a recognition that companies which are perceived as not acting responsibly. Will run into a wall of political and financial opposition, which will reduce profits or put them out of business. This trend is very obvious in the coal industry, for example, not just fossil fuel producers have ESG climate risks. However, property and casualty insurers have long term risks from climate change. They're exposed to rising sea levels, wildfires and other natural implications, of the way the surface temperature of the earth has been changing. Those greater catastrophic exposures and disruption to businesses have broad implications societally as well. Other industries have climate change risks, airlines, real estate and the list goes on and on. Climate change is, of course, a globally recognized and if you look at the investment data, occupies position number one for investor flows and investor concerns. Governance, including human capital challenges in HR issues also represent topics de jure. Companies with poor performance can be unpopular with investors, for example. Having dual class shares or the ability for certain concentrated investor sets to have power over others. Or we might see large differences between the wealth or the pay of executives relative to rank and file. Which is a ratio that has been targeted by the Council of Institutional Investors as activist for a number of years, although not always. For example, Facebook, which is controlled effectively by Mark Zuckerberg via the dual class share system. Is wildly popular with investors, that makes poor governance of potential ESG, risk likewise with workforce issues.