In the summer of 2023, a prominent business trend seemed to reach a dramatic and an unexpected end. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with more than $9 trillion under management at the time, announced that he would no longer use the term “ESG” to describe the company’s approach to investing. While interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance has grown over the last two decades, an accelerating backlash in the U.S. against “woke” investing delivered what looks like a fatal blow.
