BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard show swagger, unity and 'smell blood' as they fire back at charges they perniciously colluded to advance ESG goals

So now even the promoters of ESG products are agreeing that ESG was a stupid idea from the jump and that they were all in it for the fees? Hmm...sounds like another meme has been exposed in the world of personal finance. Surprised?

The state lawsuits, failed or not, have had their intended effect. At this point they can/should stop. The intent of NAZM, their objective, is a coordination of asset manager discretion and influence to impose objectives that are not in the fiduciary interests of investors. And now that coordinated activity has stopped. NZAM has collapsed. They've quit using using index investor assets to promote DEI audits and board race/gender composition mandates and supplier diversity grifts and other pro/regressive social policies on companies through proxy votes and "shareholder engagement" meetings. Vanguard was never all-in, but they were headed that way. But now these big asset managers have gotten back in their lane and we're all better off for it. The SEC will be reenforcing clarity around the fiduciary standard of care for all investment managers in the next 3.75 years. They're back to regulating markets, not promoting social agendas through capital market manipulation. The era of asset managers, governments and NGOs using investor non-ESG assets to push ESG/DEI agendas is over.