The pharmaceuticals industry is a paradox when it comes to environmental, social and governance investing. One might think that helping to cure the sick would put it top of the list for ethical funds. Yet Michael Canfield, a portfolio manager at Man GLG, says that responsible investors have to think twice about an industry “beset by perverse incentives, graft, absurdly skewed priorities and vast wastage”.
The coronavirus pandemic could change all that. The Economist has compared the rapid development of several Covid-19 vaccines to the mass production of penicillin during the Second World War, which restored the reputation of an unloved industry. How the drugs companies with viable vaccines operate could prove to be decisive: with so much money in ethical funds, a company that
