WSJ

ESG withers away. More than six-in-ten (63 percent) of Americans want companies to avoid commenting on social or political issues, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Their message: Silence is golden. Keeping mum, they hope, will result in increased corporate profits as management avoids distractions and remains focused on the bottom line.

The WSJ finding fits well with O’Dwyer’s current poll, showing that 67 percent of respondents believe ESG has peaked. [Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of all things ESG.]

That’s bad news for anti-woke performance artist and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is desperate to generate some momentum for his lackluster though yet unannounced presidential campaign.

It’s also a downer for leading lights of the Trump party who use ESG-bashing as a way to own the libs and divert attention from their inability to craft a legislative agenda to move the country forward.

For instance, Trumpist Senators Tom Cotton, Chuck Grassley, Marco Rubio and Marsha Blackburn signed a letter to law firms with this warning.

“Over the coming months and years, Congress will increasingly use its oversight powers to scrutinize the institutionalized antitrust violations being committed in the name of ESG, and refer those violations to the FTC and the Department of Justice.”

Get over it, Senators. America has moved beyond ESG.

Global Strategy Group’s “Business & Politics 2023” report finds that only eight percent of Americans think Congress should make investigating how US companies spend money on ESG issues a priority.

Since ESG is on life support, it’s on to the next thing for PR firms.

Grow up, Elon. Twitter workers who have survived owner Elon Musk’s savage purge of the employee ranks (e.g., 75 percent of the one-time 7,500-member work force have been sacked) are in line for stock grants that value the platform at about $20B.

That’s less than half of the $44B that Musk paid for the company in 2022.

A Wall Street Journal reporter who emailed Twitter a request for comment received a poop emoji in response. That’s pretty childish for even a guy like Musk.

Elon now views Twitter as an “inverse start-up.” He should view the company as a future Harvard Business School case study of how not to run a company.

The Guardian seeks redemption. The Scott Trust, which owns the British newspaper, has apologized for its founder’s links to slavery and allocated $12.3M to make things right.

Cotton merchant John Taylor and other Manchester businessmen founded the Manchester Guardian in 1821.

Taylor had partnerships with textile manufacturing plants that imported raw cotton produced by enslaved people on plantations in the Sea Islands, along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia.

West Indian merchant George Philips, who helped finance the Manchester Guardian, co-owned a sugar plantation worked by enslaved people in Jamaica.

The Scott Trust will fund projects in America’s Gullah Geechee region and Jamaica over the next decade to make amends.

In its statement, Scott Trust also apologized for “early editorial positions that served to support the cotton industry and therefore the exploitation of enslaved people.”

The Guardian also announced that it would expand coverage of Black communities in the UK, US, Caribbean, South America and Africa.

The Scott Trust in 2020 commissioned researchers at the University of Nottingham and University of Hull to probe whether its founder and financial backers have any connection to slavery.

It was the right thing to do.