SEC Commissioner Peirce Continues To Criticize Proposed ESG Rules

Recently, SEC Commissioner Peirce--one of the Republican appointees to the Securities & Exchange Commission--delivered a speech to Eurofi (a European think tank focused on financial regulation) in which she extensively criticized recent efforts by government regulators to impose ESG standards on companies (although she acknowledged that such views were "heterodox--some might say heretical" on the subject). Her critique focused on three issues: that (1) "ESG standards . . . drive private capital to uses that check the right officially sanctioned ESG box, not where it will best meet human needs and solve societal problems," that (2) "ESG rulemaking, by concentrating capital in favored assets, could become a source of systemic instability," and (3) "the considerable international pressure to converge on a single set of ESG standards" that could cause "poor choices [to] reverberate through the global economy."