WSJ July 2021

“This fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment in April that Japan’s Gov­ern­ment Pension In­vest­ment Fund, the world’s largest with around $1.6 tril­lion un­der man­age­ment, is aban­don­ing trendy ESG in­vest­ing. (It stands for “en­vi­ron-men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance.”) The strat­egy was a financial loser, and “we can’t sac­ri­fice returns for the sake of buy­ing en­vi­ron­mental names or ESG names,” Kenji Shiomura, se­nior di­rector of the fund’s in­vest­ment strategy de­part­ment, said in an in­ter­view with Bloomberg. Given Japan’s impend­ing glut of re­tirees and shortage of work­ers, Bloomberg’s reporters had to concede that “pen­sions are a more sen­si­tive sub­ject than climate change.”

Jeffrey Bronchick, CFA
CoveStreetCapital.com