JPMorgan Investors Ask: Is Sustainability Delivering Returns

Washington, D.C. - Ahead of this week's JPMorgan Chase & Co. annual meeting, shareholders are urged to support a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project (FEP) asking that the company evaluate its massive sustainability investments using traditional financial metrics such as return on investment (ROI) and net present value (NPV).

Proposal 7 ("Sustainability ROI Report") notes that a recent sustainability report issued by JPMorgan "emphasizes volume-based metrics (total dollars committed) rather than performance-based metrics (profitability or risk-adjusted expected returns), potentially obscuring whether these initiatives generate shareholder value."

At Tuesday's meeting, FEP Executive Director Steve Milloy will tell shareholders :

Profitability has nothing to do with sustainability. There is no analysis showing that it does. Management even refuses to do one. That says everything. If sustainability is a great business - versus mere virtue signaling - let's see it. In my conversations with corporate staff, I've have been told that our sustainability initiatives make for nice losses.

Milloy will then accuse JPMorgan Chase Chairman Jamie Dimon of several examples of high-profile misguided virtue signaling, not only on climate issues but also in donating shareholder money to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which was recently accused of funneling over $3 million to individuals in groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Milloy's biting remarks can be previewed in full here.

JPMorgan Chase shareholders can support Proposal 7 by voting their proxies before Tuesday's meeting.