Episode Details

Introduction

LIVE from your ESG ESG ESG ESG DEI DEI DEI Climate Change Change Climate Change Global Warming ESG DEI,  it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at Valentine’s Day Studios, featuring AnalystHole Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: Corporate Abolitionists, The Gulf of Stupidity, The S in ISS stands for Shitty, and Denny’s Truth Bomb 

Our show today is being sponsored by Free Float Analytics, the only platform measuring board power, connections, and performance for FREE.

Story of the Week (DR):

Goldman Sachs abandons DEI rule, saying it has ‘served its purpose’ MM

Richard Gnodde, CEO of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the bank’s Management Committee, told the BBC that the bank had scrapped its board diversity requirement because of legal developments — and the fact that it had achieved its function.

“That policy served as a catalyst to try and drive a change in behavior. What’s important here is that you have a diversity of views on that board, and if you look at these companies — they’ve all embraced diversity. I think it served its purpose.” 

Billionaire Airbnb Co-Founder Is Said to Take Role in Musk’s Government Initiative

Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder, is a board member at Tesla.

Mr. Gebbia arrived at O.P.M.’s downtown Washington D.C. headquarters in a black S.U.V. with a three-man security detail

‘Sustainable’ Investors Flee References to Climate Change

The success of Republican attacks on ESG and Donald Trump’s re-election has everyone running for cover.

For more than a decade, investment chief of Green Alpha Investments Garvin Jabusch would show a chart of the planet’s rising temperatures when pitching investment ideas to clients, saying they could help save the planet and still make money: “I’ve given up on anyone ever caring about that”

Parnassus Investments, the biggest US sustainable-investing firm, has removed references on its website that its funds are “fossil-fuel free.”

Engine No. 1, the small activist firm that led the shakeup of ExxonMobil Corp.’s board in 2021, has removed wording on its web page that corporate performance is “greatly enhanced” by investing in workers, communities and the environment. The fund now says it invests in companies that are “powering innovation and driving the reindustrialization of the United States.”