Good morning,
When I started this newsletter under its former moniker, The Loop, in 2019, the Business Roundtable had only recently redefined what the group considered the purpose of a corporation, expanding the remit of corporate leaders beyond passing profit to shareholders to enriching the lives of all of a business’s “stakeholders.”
The statement represented a monumental shift in the mentality of corporate leadership and ushered in—at least on paper—the current climate of “stakeholder capitalism,” which Fortune has championed rigorously in intervening years.
Despite the sea change, there are certainly plenty of examples since 2019 where businesses have failed to live up to the ideals of stakeholder capitalism.
Last year, oil giants shared the windfall profits of a war-time price spike with investors, issuing multi-billion-dollar dividends to shareholders, while consumers suffered surging energy costs and struggled to pay bills.
Last week, Google became the latest tech giant to suddenly sever thousands of employees from their livelihoods, eliminating 12,000 staff with little notice and leaving former and current “Googlers” with little indication of how executives chose who to cull.
Pilots of stakeholder capitalism often go adrift. To keep corporate leaders on course, Fortune has launched a new newsletter, Impact Report, and a new membership program, Impact Initiative, dedicated to promoting stakeholder capitalism, bringing on Peter Vanham, the former head of communications for the chairman of the World Economic Forum, to head up both.
“The idea that business has a role to play in improving society that goes beyond serving shareholders is the underlying belief driving content in Impact Report,” Peter, who co-wrote the book on stakeholder capitalism, told me.
This will be the last issue of Green, Inc. as the newsroom focuses on building a newsletter and community around the impact businesses have in the world. We encourage you to sign up for Impact Report. And if you’re interested in joining the Impact Initiative community of executives, you can check that out here, too.
The weekly newsletter, Peter says, highlights ways companies are implementing the tenets of stakeholder capitalism, and provides readers with templates and insights on what building stakeholder capitalism means in practice—spotlighting winning ESG strategies from leading corporations.
Thanks for reading. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to report on the most pressing issue facing humanity today, and if you sign up for Impact Report you’ll see my byline once more when I take over while Peter’s on leave later this year.
Eamon Barrett
eamon.barrett@fortune.com
@eamonbarrett88
