A landmark Unleash Prosperity (UP) report released in 2023 revealed that most large investment management firms – including State Street, BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Franklin Templeton – were routinely voting in favor of left-leaning shareholder proposals focused on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). These resolutions included racial preferences in hiring, adopting radical climate change policies, such as “Net Zero” pledges to stop using cheap fossil fuels, and divestitures in energy and plastic companies. By doing so, these money
managers were putting political biases over the financial interests of tens of millions of Americans whose pensions and other retirement funds they manage.

Our report garnered widespread publicity – including a lengthy write-up in the Wall Street Journal – and it had the intended effect. Many firms, including several of the largest, started voting more often against ESG-oriented shareholder proposals. That trend has continued.

From 2022-24, the incidence of opposition to ESG resolutions among 20 of the largest firms increased nearly 60 percent. In terms of letter grades, these firms improved their grades from a D in 2022, to a C in 2023, and a B in 2024.

We have now analyzed the proxy voting behavior of more than 275 investment management companies on 50 of the most extreme ESG-oriented resolutions in the 2024 proxy voting season, which we call the “Anti-Fiduciary 50.” Examples of these resolutions that conflict with the fiduciary duty of the firms include requiring firms to divest in oil and gas companies, adopting racial/ethnic and gender quotas in hiring, pursuing internal “racial equity” audits, and even the radical “Net Zero” promises to stop using cheap fossil fuels in the future. (In the appendix to this report, we list these 50 extreme resolutions.)

In this analysis we have calculated the percentage of times these firms voted for ESG resolutions.

These votes were typically made without the approval, or even the awareness, of their clients.

The good news is that investment firms are gradually moving away from supporting ESG/DEI initiatives being pursued by left-wing pressure groups and shareholder activists. In 2024, private sector, non-ESG branded funds were 20 percent less likely to support extreme shareholder proposals than they were in 2023.

Since we began this process, of the top 40 investment firms – which hold the preponderance of the total retirement and other funds under management – 36 have improved their scores, and only 4 have moved in the opposite direction. The average grade has improved from a C- to a B- to a B.

There are still far too many firms voting for ESG measures, but the trend is away from political correctness and back toward voting for profitability and maximizing shareholder returns.

The diminished support for extreme shareholder proposals is emblematic of a broader retreat from ESG-driven investing in the United States. In 2024, investors withdrew $19.6 billion from U.S.-based ESG funds, according to Morningstar. This followed $13 billion in withdrawals in 2023. Morningstar also reported that in 2024 there were more ESG funds that closed or merged (71), or dropped their ESG mandates (24), than there were launches of new ESG funds (10) – an unprecedented development. Moreover, total assets in U.S. “sustainable” funds at the close of 2024 were down 6 percent compared to three years earlier. And there was a landmark announcement in
October 2025. The proxy advisor Glass Lewis, which has traditionally supported a far-left agenda, announced that it would be moving away from one-size-fits-all recommendations and focusing instead on “a highly customized, client-centric framework.” That’s a major retreat and shows that the pressure on Glass Lewis has paid off.

But amid this progress, many large investment firms are still violating their fiduciary duty by supporting the ESG resolutions we analyzed more than half the time. The average grade assigned to the 40 firms casting the most votes on shareholder resolutions was a C. Three of the firms received
an F grade.

Morgan Stanley, with $7.9 trillion in assets under management, is emblematic of the firms that continue to be strong supporters of the ESG and DEI agenda. It earned a D grade this year – a slight improvement on the F grade it earned last year.

Investors pay a price for an ideologically driven approach to investing. Their votes are harvested in favor of policies that could diminish the performance of the funds holding their savings.

Returns can also be depressed when ESG investing is used to guide investment allocations; an example would be underweighting asset classes such as energy.

ESG issues are also a distraction – and often a major headache – for companies that embrace it. They are also violations of their fiduciary duty to their clients in pursuing the highest returns.

This voting also imposes an enormous and unnecessary political risk on firms that are engaging in ESG voting. A large percentage of Americans (especially of a more conservative orientation) are adversarial to ESG and firms like Morgan Stanley are at risk of losing clients (and lowering their returns on money invested) by gambling these funds on trendy political causes.

One prominent example of this risk was the now-infamous ad Bud Light campaign by Anheuser Busch featuring a transgender influencer. The parent company lost $27 billion in shareholder value. Similarly, Target was criticized by conservatives after a strong embrace of DEI in 2021. When it rolled back these efforts earlier this year, a left-wing boycott followed and sales declined. The company’s share price has declined 65 percent since 2021 – contributing to the CEO’s recent decision to resign.

In this study we are not advocating for one political position on the right or left over another.

We are advocating for companies with trillions of dollars of money under management to keep politics out of investment decisions and their proxy voting behavior on behalf of their clients.

Our goal is to alert mom and pop investors about the way in which big money management firms are voting with the retirement and investment dollars of their clients. The objective is to identify the bad actors who are putting politics ahead of their pension returns.