Portfolio Adviser • Portfolio Adviser Magazine December 2021 • LAST WORD

The chairman of the insignificantly-sized investment company Kermitted Asset Management was worried the ESG community may be shooting itself in the foot – but then he spotted an angle

“Did you get to see anything of Glasgow in the end?” I asked the chairman of the insignificantly-sized investment company Kermitted Asset Management when we caught up the other day following his return from attending the COP26 conference. I say ‘attending’ but, the last time we spoke, the chairman was refusing to leave his hotel room for a litany of reasons of varying plausibility.

From memory, these included concerns about hostile demonstrators, a general air of apocalyptic woe hanging over conference-goers and, most believable of all, Adair, the chairman’s terrier-sized pet hamster turned personal bodyguard running away to hang out with a particular nasty pack of rats from Paisley. Given all that, the chairman’s reply was unexpected. “As a matter of fact, I did,” he smiled.

“I’ll not deny I was feeling a tad down when we caught up previously – especially with Adair going absent without leave. A day or two later, though, there was a familiar scratching at my hotel-room door and the prodigal hamster had returned – and better still, as I suspected, the rats had proclaimed him their new king.”

“Glossing over what happened to the previous incumbent,” I shuddered, “this prompted you to get out and about?” “Not immediately,” the chairman replied. “Unfortunately, a number of Adair’s new subjects had chosen to tag along, which required serious diplomacy with the hotel’s guests and staff. In fact, I have a nasty feeling the place may have since shut down on some health and safety technicality.

“That hiccup aside, though, I cannot tell you how useful a seething pack of rats can be in helping clear a path – particularly once you have availed yourself of a pair of gnaw-proof bicycle clips. All week I barely saw a pedestrian, let alone a demonstrator, within a hundred feet of us – and it certainly offered some immediacy to the gloomier environmental concerns of many of the conference-goers.”

“And did you draw any particular lessons from COP26?” I asked. “I think what really struck me was, at a time when we need to be supremely open to any and all ideas that could help extend the best-before date on this planet, just how closed-minded people can be,” the chairman sighed. “Too often, it seems, belief trumps reason in the sustainability debate.”

“An interesting – one might say bold – manifesto,” I observed. “Please tell me more.” “Where do I start?” shrugged the chairman. “There was the effective banishing of all things nuclear to the ‘Blue Zone’ of the conference and well away from the ‘Green Zone’ to which the public was allowed. Nuclear energy has to be part of any credible route to net-zero yet, in many countries, it is taboo.

“Then there is the one-eyed view of the miles-per-gallon issue where national targets are being missed because no-one will acknowledge how improvements in fuel efficiency are essentially being nullified by drivers’ preferences for really heavy and thus really fuel-inefficient SUVs. And don’t get me started on the way oil and gas companies are barred from ESG innovation on what amount to quasi-religious grounds.”

“But if I did get you started …?” I prompted hopefully. “Then I would reference one, admittedly uncomfortable, analogy I heard at a party,” the chairman replied. “To be clear, the ESG record of most oil and gas businesses makes, well, me look like a saint. Equally, if you are genuinely seeking the highest concentration of expertise on managing CO2 anywhere on this planet, it unquestionably lies within these companies.

“So shunning their input on the basis of past misdemeanours is analogous with the US invading Iraq and then barring anyone from the ruling Ba’ath Party from any form of government. Nobody is for a second suggesting Saddam Hussein was a nice chap but the Ba’athists were the only people there who knew how to run anything – civil service, utilities, whatever – and without them … well, we know what happened next.”

“Any chance we could end on a happier note?” I wondered. “Absolutely,” nodded the chairman. “I’m a natural contrarian, as you know, but I just could not work out the contrarian ESG play. Now, and in no small part thanks to Adair and his subjects, I believe I just might.”