ESG jobs in finance: bracing for the Trump effect, or not

efinancialcareers.com:

Not so long ago, environmental, social and governance (ESG) jobs were all the rage in banking and finance. In the years after the pandemic, they carried a 20% pay premium and there was talk of a skills gap: in 2020, CFA Institute found that 18% of portfolio manager jobs wanted ESG skills, but that only 1.5% of portfolio managers had them. Buffing a CV with ESG seemed like a no-brainer. 

Not any more.  

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Donald Trump is no friend of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles, which he's described«radical left garbage.» In a campaign video posted onTruth Social in 2023, Trump promised that if he was reelected, he would, «support a law to keep politics away from Americans’ retirement accounts forever.”  

It's a statement that hasn't gone unnoticed in the banking industry. Writing on social media last week, Ehsan Khoman, head of commodities, ESG and emerging markets research at MUFG, said Trump's reelection may to America's withdrawal from the Paris agreement to reduce carbon emissions by 43% by 2030. Natural resources bankers who'd rebranded themselves as ESG specialists, may want to revert to their old ways.

Trump's resurgence has „definitely created some negative sentiment“ around the future direction of ESG jobs, admits Gabriel Nam, a certified ESG analyst and director of Sustainability and Strategy at recruitment firm Mercury Urval in Singapore. The head of ESG Capital Markets at one bank in London quietly agrees. „We're anticipating that Trump will dial back climate commitments,“ he says. „- There could be more deregulation, which will lessen the need for ESG expertise.“

Trump risks hitting the ESG sector when it's already down. Investor interest in ESG