In today's WSJ, Terrence Keely reports that:
Vanguard’s Tim Buckley is having a Copernican moment. Like the famous Renaissance polymath who challenged conventional wisdom about celestial movement, the 54-year-old CEO is challenging the asset-management industry’s environmental, social and governance orthodoxy.
“Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing,” Mr. Buckley said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. ...
...What is it that Mr. Buckley knows that so many others don’t?
For one thing, he understands that it’s difficult for active managers to beat broad indexes, as most ESG funds promise.
... Mr. Buckley knows that the largest index manager in the world isn’t qualified to tell individual companies how to set their ESG priorities. “It would be hubris to presume we know the right strategy for the thousands of companies that Vanguard invests in,” he told the FT.
It's almost as though he read my book:
