‘I’m Not Woke,’ Says JP Morgan CEO Defending ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’

‘I’m Not Woke,’ Says JP Morgan CEO Defending ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon speaks during the Business Roundtable CEO Innovation Summit in Washington on Dec. 6, 2018. Jim Waton/AFP via Getty Images
Naveen Athrappully
Updated:
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JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview at a June 1 conference that his push toward “stakeholder capitalism” was being misconstrued as being “woke” and that he remained “a red-blooded free-market capitalist.”

“I’m not woke. And I think people are mistaking the stakeholder capitalism thing for being woke,” Dimon told a conference organized by Autonomous Research, according to Financial Times. “All we’re saying is when we wake up in the morning, what we give a [expletive] about is serving customers, earning their respect, earning their repeat business.”

Stakeholder capitalism goes beyond traditional shareholder capitalism, which focuses on actions that are favorable to its stock appreciation, to encompass “socially responsible investing” and “environmentally sustainable” methodology with a responsibility toward its “stakeholders,” such as workers, community, and other factors.

According to Stephen Soukup, author of the book “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business,” this new capitalism allows a company to act against the interests of its shareholders.

Republican politicians have been raising the issue of whether banks, including JP Morgan, were showing discrimination toward certain sectors of the economy—such as gun manufacturers and fossil-fuel-based energy companies—to appease a progressive agenda.

Dimon said JP Morgan was “quite serious about climate,” saying that the United States wasn’t “getting climate right,” according to Financial Times.

“I don’t think people should get involved in some of these issues where it’s far more detailed than you think and people [are] just getting jazzed up about, you got to do this,“ he said. ”No, you don’t.”

Earlier this year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in the firm’s annual letter that companies were expected to play a role in “decarbonizing the economy” and that included everyone from shareholders to customers and regulators.

Businesses that fail to cut back their carbon footprint will miss out on billions of dollars of investments, Fink wrote.

On May 24, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recommended that money managers such as Fink be barred from voting on behalf of other investors “to advance their own political interests,” in an interview with CNBC.

“Because that is not capitalism, that is abusing the market,” Cruz said.

Cruz said Fink and other progressive CEOs have shifted focus from increasing profits for their companies to taking stances on issues such as climate change and other causes promoted by the political left. The senator also pointed to investment screening that involved controversial ESG criteria.

ESG stands for the environmental, social, and governance risk theoretically embedded in a business that isn’t accounted for monetarily.

Different agencies use varying methods and criteria to calculate ESG. Generally, the environment score is calculated based on the company’s performance in treating greenhouse emissions and its role in climate change. The social score evaluates the company’s relationship with its stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, and shareholders, while the governance factor considers compliance with municipal, state, and federal laws, board diversity, and other related performance indicators.

Opponents have likened ESG to a Chinese-style social credit score for rating corporations in order to weed out companies that don’t fall in line politically.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk took a jab at ESG investment funds after news broke that German authorities raided Deutsche Bank and asset management company DWS Group because of alleged “greenwashing” of its ESG funds.

Greenwashing refers to processes by which companies falsely present themselves as more pro-environment than they really are.

In a June 1 Twitter post responding to the news, Musk wrote, “I have yet to see an ESG list that *isn’t* fraudulent.”

He had earlier called ESG a “scam” following the removal of electric car company Tesla from the ESG Index while Exxon Mobil Corp. remained on the list.

According to some analysts, stakeholder capitalism helps foreign nations such as China advance in place of U.S. companies.
Naveen Athrappully
Naveen Athrappully
Author
Naveen Athrappully is a news reporter covering business and world events at The Epoch Times.
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