‘Go woke, go broke,’ runs the catchphrase. Now, at last, we are presented with the welcome opportunity to put this proposition to the test. A new exchange-traded fund has been launched in the US whose unique selling point is that it will refuse to invest in companies which use Diversity Equity and Inclusion criteria in their employment policies. DEI delights not Azoria 500 Meritocracy ETF, no, nor ESG (environmental, social and governance) neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
The fund has just been launched with some fanfare at (where else?) Mar-a-Lago, and its founders say they hope to raise a billion dollars by the end of next year. They declare their intention to use their investing strategy to pressure companies listed on the Standard and Poor’s 500 index to drop their DEI and ESG policies. Its founders told USA Today that the fund ‘will allow retail investors to vote with their portfolios and play a role in pressuring the nation’s largest companies to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion policies’.
They have, bless them, something of a mountain to climb if that’s really the plan.
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