Greenwashing and ESG Investing at a Crossroads

The twentieth lecture in the Indiana University - ECGI Online Series was given by Pedro Matos (University of Virginia Darden School of Business & ECGI) on the topic "Greenwashing and ESG Investing at a Crossroads".

The inclusion of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors as part of investment processes has gone mainstream but disparities among commitments, actions and impact remain. This session covered what we know about ESG investing, “greenwashing” (the exaggeration by investors’ of their actual commitments to sustainable investing) and some of the recent backlash against ESG.

Pedro Matos is the Academic Director of Mayo Center for Asset Management, holds the John G. Macfarlane Family Chair and is the James A. and Stacy Cooper Bicentennial Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. His research focuses on the growing importance of institutional investors worldwide. It has been published in leading academic journals as well as monographs for the CFA Institute and featured in the press, including in The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, Bloomberg, etc. and received numerous research awards. He is a Research Associate at the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and a member of the UN-sponsored Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI) Academic Network Advisory Committee. He previously taught at the University of Southern California and holds a Ph.D. in Finance from INSEAD.

The public lecture series was organised by Institute for Corporate Governance (ICG) in partnership with the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University and ECGI.