ESG, the environmental, social and governance concept, has fuelled a surge in mutual fund launches over the past four years. But popular though it may be, there are those who say that the way it is marketed is no longer helpful.
It was only in 2004 that ESG was even heard of, when it was used in a UN-sponsored report, as part of a response to the corporate governance disasters of Enron and WorldCom. But it was a slow burn. Then, however, about 2018, the concept took off. The world woke up to the environmental degradation around them, and this gave fund management marketeers something to work with. ESG mutual funds and exchange-traded funds became the industry’s fastest-growing products.
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