Everyone Wants to Do ESG Now

We talked a few weeks ago about the documentary-filmmaker son of a financial-services billionaire who hated working in financial services and loves alternative medicine and “archetypal astrology.” He now works as the head of environmental, social and governance affairs at his dad’s firm, Interactive Brokers Group Inc. I wrote:

Broadly speaking you might expect there to be a lot of those people. Not so much ESG heirs, maybe, but people who don’t care much about finance and nonetheless want a job in financial services. You might assume that there are a lot of people who go to fancy colleges and have a vague desire to make the world a better place. As they approach graduation, they go to the career-services office and say “how can I save the world?” Career services says: “Well, you can go work at a nonprofit for a low salary, or you can go do environmental reporting at a big asset manager for a high salary.” (Or, they go to their parents, who work in finance, and say “I am going to save the world by working at a nonprofit,” and the parents say “well let’s not be too hasty, have you considered ESG investing? I could hook you up.”) And so there is a steady supply of people who don’t care about finance but who end up working in financial services in ESG roles.