I've followed with great interest the ebb and wane of divestment efforts ever since the South African apartheid focus, now more years ago than is polite to remind me.
So it's fun to have a new thought every now and then. Just had one -
Heretofore, it may have been seemingly smart for Koch Enterprises, and the two brothers, most especially Charles Koch, to view themselves as out of the fray, in that Koch is a private, supremely closely-held corporation, thus unaffected in the first derivative, from any divestment calls.
However, look at their positioning today, and compare them with, for example, Royal Dutch Shell. Koch Enterprises is unabashedly remaining full-bore the exemplar of a traditional refiner, pipeline operator, and downstream chemicals manufacturer (they've little to no exposure in oil or gas production). They have demonstrated zero interest in moving away from these sectors. RDS, for all its many faults, has sensed the change in the wind, as testfied by inter alia their recent pegging CEO's compensation to certain CO2 reduction targets.
My germ of an idea is that it might be possible that a publicly-held company may, in its need to take into account at least some of public attitudes towards societal desiderata, be earlier and more effective in adapting itself to a new paradigm than a privately-held one. Koch may be winning battles but losing the war.
Strange as it may seem, but there might be posters here who are unaware of the prodigious amount of material about Chas. & David Koch, their company and their political machinations, laid out in Jane Mayer's Dark Money. That work has been referenced any number of times in TMC posts, but if you've not yet read it, there are many minutes remaining until Christmas: go buy it for yourself. And read it.
