“Why are you lugging around that big jar of cash with ‘TIP’ scrawled on it in giant letters?” I asked the chairman of the insignificantly-sized investment company Kermitted Asset Management when we caught up the other day. “I know it all feels a bit 2001 at the moment – maybe even 2007 – but surely things aren’t so bad you’re having to tap up clients for gratuities? I mean, if you aren’t paid enough for what you do, who is?
“That said, you seem to be doing remarkably well – are those all £10 notes?” “They are indeed,” nodded the chairman. “Although I fear you may be labouring under a couple of misconceptions. First of all, this tidy sum of cash does not belong to me; I am merely holding it on trust for my business – which is ironic because I don’t trust anyone in my business not to half-inch it while I am out meeting you.
“And second of all, this is not a tip jar – it’s a T-I-P jar.” “The entirely unlaboured nuance being?” I sighed.
“That T-I-P stands for something, of course,” snorted the chairman. “In this case, ‘Terribly Inapplicable Phrase’ – or ‘Totally Inappropriate Philosophy’ – back at the office, we aren’t hugely bothered which. The only rule is that if someone uses it, it’s a tenner in the jar, no ifs, no buts, no right of appeal.”
“Well, obviously,” I shrugged. “Still, one question springs to mind – how do we progress this conversation, if you can’t tell me what phrase to avoid and I have no desire to be involuntarily donating cash to the Kermitted Christmas Party Fund or whatever it is? What do you suggest – charades?” “The Kermitted Corporate Overdraft Fund was more what I had in mind,” murmured the chairman, absent-mindedly.
Visibly pulling himself together, however, he continued: “Still, I see your point – and, while I have no intention of abasing myself here with a public game of charades, I don’t see any harm in offering a riddle. What has three letters, begins with an ‘E’, ends in a ‘G’ and, in happier, simpler times, you used to be able to go to work on it? Oh – and, while you can’t boil or fry it, we’ve done pretty well in recent years poaching it.”
“Ah,” I said. “I’d been hearing whispers some asset managers had started banning staff from using … that phrase but I didn’t want to believe it. I mean, sure, you and I have spent chunks of the last four years discussing the inability of this industry to agree on a name for The Sector Formerly Known As Ethical, let alone a common vocabulary, and so everything resets back to zero every decade or so, but this seems especially self-destructive.”
The chairman, the jar and I sat in silence for a while. “So what was the tipping point for the industry?” I asked eventually. “Was it the ultimately less than compatible trio of elements being shoehorned into a single acronym? Or that what’s good for the environment isn’t necessarily an unvarnished social benefit and vice-versa? Or that the whole idea began being twisted out of shape by politicians – first in the US, then more recently in the UK?
“Or that E …” The chairman shot me a warning look, but I was on a roll: “Or that E-blank-G could mean a million different things to a million different people? Was it that the Russian invasion of Ukraine made old-school vice stocks like oil and armaments just too darned attractive? Or was it that all of those things – and a hundred others – meant it was too nuanced and too complicated and just hurt people’s brains to think about?
“Just please don’t tell me it was because all your marketeers got a bit bored and fancied a shiny new way of pushing the next wave of climate change funds?” “I wish I could tell you I had an answer,” the chairman sighed again. “Of course, with this business, it often simply comes down to the fear ‘everybody else is doing it’. In the end, I guess the thing about ESG is …” Then he winced, pulled out his wallet and stuck another £10 note in his jar.
