A global asset management corporation handling total portfolio funds in excess of nine hundred billion dollars is now bribing its employees to make investment decisions that subordinate profit maximization to the advancement of environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.
On Thursday, AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) announced that it will now provide financial incentives to its approximately four hundred senior executives based on reallocating portfolio fund investments to achieve ESG goals:
“As part of its commitment to becoming net zero as a business and investor by 2050 to help the transition to a more sustainable world, AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) is now including ESG targets in the remuneration of its senior executives.”
The compensation policy focuses primarily on portfolio decarbonization objectives.
AXA IM’s ESG incentive compensation packages include financial rewards for achieving client portfolio, as well as internal, decarbonization goals by 2025:
- 75% of the deferred compensation is tied to reducing carbon intensity in the company’s financial and real estate portfolios.
- 25% of the ESG financial incentive is based on AXA IM’s goal of reducing its corporate operational CO2 footprint by 26%.
AXA IM’s financial incentives are designed to reach three ESG targets by 2025:
- 25% reduction in carbon intensity of the corporate portfolios of its asset managers.
- 50% of assets under management of the real estate portfolio aligned with the European Union's Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor's projections.
- 26% reduction in AXA IM corporation’s operational CO2 footprint.
By handing over their pension and retirement funds to asset managers that practice ESG, investors risk sacrificing growth of their portfolios - so that the investment firms can achieve ideological ESG goals.
As 2022 drew to a close, all 10 of the largest Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds left investors suffering double-digit percentage losses in the value of their portfolios, an analysis by Bloomberg reveals.
What’s more, the report finds that eight of the ten largest ESG funds, measured by assets, performed worse than the S&P 500.
Asset managers have a fiduciary responsibility to make investment decisions based solely on their clients’ goals and best interests – but, AXA IM’s website says that also includes achieving the company’s own climate objectives.
“We believe our fiduciary duty goes beyond delivering returns to our clients. We believe it’s also about investing responsibly, driving climate action and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the world we live in,” AXA IM’s website declares.
AXA IM says it’s also using the money it invests to pressure companies in need of capital to capitulate to its ESG ideology:
“The way we act on our convictions and allocate capital has the power to influence investee companies’ behaviours.”
This practice, in which financial institutions limit their investments to companies aligned with specific leftwing environmental and social causes, was highlighted in December at a Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing.
There, Brigham Minerals Founder and Executive Director Bud Brigham provided testimony alleging that a bank had tried to use his loan application as leverage to coerce him into publicly expressing support for ESG ideology.
The company's website calls on all other assets managers to become ESG activists, as well:
“By working on a standalone basis and defending our individual progresson on the road to Net Zero, we as asset managers do not do justice to the magnitude of the challenge we are facing.”
“By pooling our efforts and influence, we have the power to effect tangible change, working with other key players of the NZ ecosystem. We call on all asset managers to consider three opportunities to do this–with clients, with regulators, and as an industry.”
AXA IM's website also reports that the company has “adopted the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an overarching guide to test the credibility, relevance, scale of impact and contributions of our investments. Our strategy currently supports 13 of the UN’s 17 SDGs.”
Editor's Note: This piece reprinted with permission and was first published on CNSNews.com
