Corporate governance doesn't matter

Apparently:

Deutsche Bank has become the latest in a series of brokers to cut back on specialist ESG (environmental, social and governance) services. The bank told clients that it had discontinued corporate governance research and decommissioned its specialist related website earlier this week. Last week, Responsible Investor revealed that JP Morgan had ended dedicated ESG coverage as a result of staffing cuts and would roll it into mainstream equity research. The week before, it was revealed that Citigroup would also be cutting back its in-house SRI research team. A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the end of the corporate governance service and would not say whether research staff would be leaving the company as a result. However, sources close to the bank said Deutsche had decided to focus on environmental research rather than corporate governance in order to save resources. The bank has increasingly been tailoring research to climate change issues backing the strategy of its funds subsidiary, Deutsche Asset Management, which has made environmental themes one of its core investment strategies.