Institutional Investors and ESG Preferences

Using a unique panel dataset covering US companies over the 2010-2019 period, we find that measures of institutional investor holdings are strongly driven by the ESG quality of companies. While investors are driven to add high-quality ESG companies to their portfolios, there is a negative relationship with ESG when it comes to taking large ownership stakes. Furthermore, ESG scores are negatively related to the portfolio weightings of institutional investors raising concerns of greenwashing by funds. Our analysis of individual ESG scores demonstrates that the G scores have the highest impact on measurements of institutional investor holdings and no impact on portfolio weightings of investors. Finally, we show that large investors behave differently than the rest, and Bloomberg disclosure-based ESG scores are more significant