The anti-ESG industry is taking investors for a ride

, there were two iron laws in investing. One, popularised by Milton Friedman, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, posited that a company’s responsibility above all else was to provide returns to its shareholders. The second, promoted by Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, an investment firm, held that asset-management fees must be driven to the lowest level possible. The growing importance of environmental, social and governance () criteria has weakened Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy, perhaps fatally. Global funds manage $7.7trn in assets, having doubled in size in the past seven years. Even the Business Roundtable, a talking shop for American bosses, declared in 2019 that companies must place the interests of a variety of clients, customers and communities on equal footing with shareholders.