The politicization of corporate governance (and, derivatively, of the capital markets themselves) is a complicated subject. Treatments of the topic tend to be either eye-glazingly technical or disappointingly superficial. For that reason, the origins and significance of “stakeholder capitalism,” ESG (referring to the woke investment policy of “environmental, social, and governance”), “sustainability,” and similar activist strategies remain poorly understood by the average citizen—even though most Americans have an ownership interest in the stock market through their 401(k) accounts or personal investments.
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