Larry Fink, the CEO of the world largest asset manager, pushed "social purpose" higher on the corporate agenda with his annual letter, warning that every company "must show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” Social activists cheered; activist investors more accustomed to pressuring CEOs for stock buybacks and dividends, groaned. As onetime corporate raider Sam Zell put it, “I didn’t know Larry Fink had been made God.” Our roundtable of Imogen Rose-Smith, Brian Walsh and David Bank pull apart not only Fink's arguments, but the critics' and the cheerleaders' as well.
