Matt Levine, Columnist

ESG Stocks Are Graded on a Curve

Also WeWork, SoftBank and private-bank coverage.

November 11, 2019 at 5:02 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

What I should do is launch the Money Stuff S&P ESG Fund, a mutual fund whose stated mission would be to invest in the 500 companies in the S&P 500 index with the best environmental, social and governance ratings judged by my proprietary rating system. Don’t worry too much about how that system works, because it’s not particularly important: There are 500 companies in the S&P 500, and 500 slots in my fund, so it doesn’t matter how you do on the ratings; everyone gets in.

Why would investors want this? Well, as far as I can tell, investors want two things: