Private capital & investment governance · CC BY 4.0
Do ESG funds make stakeholder-friendly investments?
Aneesh Raghunandan; Shiva Rajgopal
Review of Accounting Studies · 2022-06-27
Supports due-diligence questions about ESG fund claims, portfolio conduct, disclosure scores and fees. US mutual funds are an adjacent population; no family-office effect is tested.
Original practical companion
An ESG Mandate Verification File: Testing Portfolio Claims Against Observable Conduct
Raghunandan and Rajgopal’s study of US ESG mutual funds shows why a family office should examine a manager’s claims, holdings and observable conduct separately. This companion develops a mandate-verification process that compares promised objectives with portfolio evidence, distinguishes disclosure from performance, and records the costs and limitations of assurance. It does not conclude that every ESG strategy is ineffective or recommend particular investments. The proposed controls translate findings from a historical mutual-fund sample into questions that a family office can test in its own manager oversight.