Willie Wonka and ESG

What started out as something so promising has quickly turned into a bit of a car crash, it seems. We are now at the stage where firms are actually avoiding using the term ESG altogether.
It reminds us a bit like the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where one of the kids eats so much candy that she ends up exploding. Similarly, so many ETF asset managers jumped on the ESG bandwagon and the green washing became so prevalent, that they ended up in a similar situation to poor Violet.

Morgan Stanley crashes the ESG ETF party

Another juggernaut manager hits the ETF playing field with the announcement from Morgan Stanley that they are to launch a suite of six new ETFs – four indexed ESG strategies and two active ESG strategies across a range of asset classes.

IS ESG THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN NOW?

ETFs aligned with ESG outcomes accounted for 65 per cent of all net inflows into European ETFs in 2022, even as ESG strategies underperformed. Now there is €249bn in ESG-aligned ETFs in Europe, representing 18.8 per cent of total assets

Tabula enters the ESG arena

The Tabula EUR IG Bond Paris-aligned Climate UCITS ETF (TABC) is listed on Deutsche Boerse with an OCF of 0.25%.

Active ETFs on the way up

ESG, thematic and active ETFs are predicted to see the strongest growth over the coming two to three years as passive ETFs’ majority slims.

It’s all about ESG

ESG ETFs go from strength to strength. ESG ETFs reached €51.5 bn by the end of August 2020, according to Morningstar.