The Little-Known Group That's Battling Wall Street Over ESG
Will Hild’s Consumers’ Research is targeting Bank of America in its latest push against sustainable investing.
Will Hild is leading the anti-environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) fight against sustainable investing by targeting BlackRock Inc. and Bank of America.
Photographer: Eric Lee/BloombergOperating with a meager budget from a suburban home outside Washington, Will Hild is gearing up for his next battle against Wall Street and the forces behind ESG investing.
Hild and his tiny staff at Consumers’ Research are at the forefront of the movement, crafting adversarial campaigns that attack money managers who try to combine profits with altruistic goals by using environmental, social and governance metrics to help decide where to invest. The 37-year-old Hild, backed by powerful right-wing operative Leonard Leo, is part of a network of conservatives committed to defeating ESG, many of them opposed to efforts to mitigate climate change.
He works behind the scenes crisscrossing the nation to lobby Republican state officials to take up the cause, but Hild is equally comfortable being out front—sending bombastic text messages about the evils of “woke” corporations or making media appearances touting ESG as a threat to America.