It's hard for anyone not to notice the tremendous growth of the incorporation of ESG considerations and professional portfolio management today. ESG incorporation in portfolio management, in fact, has enjoyed a nearly hockey stick upward growth curve over the last 15 years. This is true for both the US and the rest of the developed world. If you look at various data, for example, from the US Social Investment Foundation Forum, you can see that while let's say, 15 years ago, ESG incorporation in portfolio management was not non-existent. It enjoyed a period of growth essentially linear and nearly flat for about half a decade. Then roughly speaking around or just after the financial crisis later in the markets, which was in 2009, we saw a dramatic increase in flows and levels hosted by professional portfolio managers, sourced from both institutional and retail investors across time. We see overall growth ranging from About $17 billion 2005 to just recently about 17 trillion in the United States alone. Other trends in the industry have involved not just overall growth, but a kind of change and a re-ranking of the importance of issues that investors care about. The ranking of those specific ESG issues today sees the number one issue being climate change. 15 years ago, it was tobacco related, mostly divestment, and divestment from what I referred to as oppressive regimes. Most recently, issues with oppression in Sudan, and then more distantly, challenges of firms interacting with the apartheid regime in South Africa. So once again, relying on data from the Social Investment Forum Foundation, you can see that ESG rank specifically is E and SNG at the most general level. With levels appearing to be about $13 trillion dollars in assets somehow tagged with underlying ESG concerns. Of course, 13 trillion, roughly speaking, times 3 is close to $40 trillion. $17 trillion dollars is the overall number. What this indicates then is that a number of issues are overlapping, or investment products address more than one concern at a time. When we disaggregate the three components into their subcomponents, we see once again that climate change and those related to carbon exposure, carbon footprint, and so on amount to about $4.2 trillion. Anti-corruption, which is sometimes thought of an S issue as well as a G issue comes in at about 2.4. Traditional board issues comes in third, although remember today, board issues often overlap with issues of diversity and equity, again, within the corporate governance mechanisms that firms. Sustainable natural resources and agriculture followed, followed by executive pay. And again, although executive pay has long been the ledger domain of those focused on traditional corporate governance vectors. Today, executive pay also relate to the S social issues, related to things like income and wealth distribution. One of the most recent areas of interest is in the ratio of CEO to executive pay, which for US based corporations has been identified to be larger than 300 times. Of course, again, as this relates to economics, it's been the study in the academic literature as well. Product safety, product characteristic, and the product category most generally comes next, followed by, now, tobacco. Typically, negatively screening out tobacco and conflict risk or oppressive regime risk following it. And then you can see further on down the line. Here, general environmental concerns coming in near the bottom of the current list that you see. So it's been a shift almost surely, driven by two components. First, investor interest and the ability to measure carbon exposures, which has advanced dramatically in the period ensuing following the financial crisis. And so there's been a movement from rating into measurement that has corresponded with the rise in the interest, specifically, focusing on climate change and carbon exposure related issues. To give you the historical perspective, here's the same graph going back to 2007. And again, as you can see, the top issues were those related to tobacco investment or specifically, divestment. And then divestment from firms who have exposure to Sudan, typically, with the challenges then in Darfur. And the MacBride principles, which had to do with issues in Northern Ireland. More general human rights followed, then community relations, alcohol, and finally, issues broadly aggregated to a single environmental category. Again, this is only about 15 years ago, and so you can see not just dramatic multi trillion dollar flows into ESG related assets, but also a re-ranking of the target issues important to investors.
