iNearly a year ago, the Business Roundtable fomented interest in so-called "stakeholder capitalism" by issuing this statement. The statement garnered 181 signatories who proclaimed "a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders".
In a forthcoming paper, Aneesh Raghunandan at the London School of Economics and Shivaram Rajgopal at the Columbia Business School took a look at the companies who signed the statement and reached some interesting conclusions. They found that relative to within-industry peer firms, the signatories:
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commit environmental and labor-related compliance violations more often (and pay more in compliance penalties);
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have higher market shares;
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spend more on lobbying policymakers; and
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report lower stock returns alphas and worse operating margins.
According to the authors, a key takeaway of their study "is that investors ought to be vigilant when assessing claims of stakeholder-oriented practices by firms and ESG funds". The study is available here.
