Stewardship could deliver what ESG cannot. Here’s how:

Two weeks ago,  I argued that ESG is not an investment category. It is an adjective, not a noun. It doesn’t make sense to pretend that there is some common quality attributable to any investment fund that uses the term ESG. ESG is an umbrella term used by a variety of funds whose  claims to have injected some element of social, environmental or governance evaluation are hard to verify.   Stewardship, on the other hand, is a noun. To find out what stewardship means look at any family business that has lasted a century and has a track record of caring for people, of this generation and beyond. Ayala Corporation of the Philippines; Eu Yan Sang in Malaysia and Singapore; Dr Reddy’s and  Tata and Sons in India; SC Johnson in North America; Linney Group in the UK.  (Ong Boon Hwee, Founder of CEO Stewardship Asia, and I have described these and others in our book, Entrusted). Read the rest here.