Socially responsible investing through the equity funds in the global ownership network.

ABSTRACT: We analyze the connectivity of equity investments to the firms in the global ownership network that are reported as non-compliant with Environment, Social, and Government (ESG) benchmarks. We find that a large number of shareholders have ownership linkages to non-ESG firms, most commonly with three or four degrees of separation. Analyzing the betweenness centrality for shareholders connecting the ultimate owners and non-ESG firms, we find that the investment management companies play important roles in channeling the investment money into non-ESG firms, where largest American asset managers commonly have one to two degrees of separation on their ownership linkages to those problematic firms. Since asset managers collect capital from investors by running the equity funds, we analyze the own

SUBMITTER: Mizuno T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8360556 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature