Profitable rebellion
companies invested in pools together and grows, resulting in them having more control (voting rights) in the operations of the portfolio’s companies) to emphas ize the importance of financial performance, leading away from what Strive believes are the lesser important measures of a business such as ESG. 14
For example, Strive, after purchasing more than $2m of shares, sent a letter to McDonald’s to express their concerns over their handling of diversity, equity and inclusion matters. Strive said that their concern regards McDonald’s decision to set race - and gender-based targets for its board, management and employee ranks, as well as race-based targets for suppliers and vendors, as this decision does not put Strive clients’ best interests of profitab ility in mind. In their letter, they cited instances of similarly large corporations facing litigation for diversity policies that provided preferential treatment, at Starbucks and AT&T, similar to what was being proposed. 15
Figure 2: Strive’s Voting Decisions on 11 ESG Shareholder Resolutions 16
Additionally, across 6 different listed companies that Strive has positions in, they voted in 11 different ESG shareholder resolutions, opposing environmental or socially motivated shareholder proposals as they claimed they would (see figure 2 above) . A year ago, total AUM of all anti-ESG funds on the market was only $282m, and today it is over $2bn. 17 However, in the last few months inflows into all anti-ESG funds have slowed dramatically. Morningstar’s latest data shows that after peaking at $377m duri ng the third quarter of 2022, more than five times the previous quarterly record, total net new deposits then fell to $188m in the last three months of 2022, and further to $183m in the first three months of 2023. 18
14 Yahoo! Finance Business Wire. 2023. Strive Asset Management Exceeds $750 Million in AUM, 10 Months After Launch. June 9. Accessed August 2023. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/strive-asset-managementexceeds-750- 161500231.html. 15 Wall Street Journal. 2023. Vivek Ramaswamy-Linked Firm Takes McDonald’s Stake, Targets Diversity Policies. July 19. Accessed August 2023. https://www.wsj.com/articles/vivek-ramaswamy-linked-firm-takes- mcdonaldsstake-targets-diversity-policies-e6ed1dba. 16 See note 12. 17 Reuters. 2023. 'Anti-ESG' funds face slowing deposits, Morningstar says. June 9. Accessed August 2023. 'Anti-ESG' funds face slowing deposits, Morningstar says | Reuters. 18 See note 12.
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