The Article That Got the Headline Right and Then Lost Its Nerve

A July 2026 article in PA Future argues that ESG investing has a governance problem. The case it makes is that while investors and media fixate on environmental and social issues, governance, the G, is routinely overlooked despite being the foundation everything else depends on.

The article contends that governance reporting needs greater standardisation. It argues that executive pay should be linked to genuine investor engagement. It notes that weak board structures and poor leadership represent material business risks.

It concludes that “investors can champion environmental and social progress all they like, but weak governance can quickly undermine many of their ambitions.”

Benjamin Thiele-Long read it and found himself simultaneously convinced by the premise and irritated by the execution.

“The headline completely grabbed me as being completely true. And then I found myself reading the article and finding the equivocation about the claim almost watered it down to the point that it didn’t hold the power that it was meant to.”

May Be. Must Be.

Benjamin’s first critique is linguistic and deliberate.

The PA Future article argues that governance “may be the most important” of the three ESG letters. It states that investors “can focus on the composition and behaviour of the board” to drive lasting change.

His objection is precise. “If you’re going to say it is, it either is or it isn’t.”

And on the investors who want to influence sustainability outcomes: “Not can. Must. Just must.”

For a barrister who has argued cases at every level of the English criminal and civil courts, the distinction between may and must is not semantic. It is the difference between an argument and a position. The PA Future article, in his reading, assembles the evidence for a bold claim and then declines to make it.

He adds, with some precision, that the article is written by someone at a firm that describes itself as evidence-based, yet contains not a single data point.

“If you’re going to hold yourself out as an evidence-based investor, give me some evidence. Because it’s out there. There’s tons of research about how good governance is the cornerstone. Let’s put our money where our mouth is.”

The Barrister Who Became a Communications Director

Benjamin Thiele-Long was called to the Bar at twenty-three. He spent a decade as a criminal barrister, working primarily in financial crime and regulation, alongside what the profession calls high street crime: the full range of serious criminal cases handled by the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office, and the US Department of Justice. He appeared at every level of English criminal and civil court.

He moved into communications through a recognition that the two disciplines share more than they appear to. Both require building arguments, understanding audiences, and communicating complex positions to people with the power to decide. He moved to the United States, held senior communications and ESG roles including SVP and Chief ESG and Communications Officer at Petco, and has recently returned to practice as a barrister at Drystone Chambers.

The careers are not as separate as they look. “They seem so oddly opposed, but actually the similarities are vast.”

It is from that dual vantage point that he reads the PA Future article: as someone who understands both the legal precision required to make an argument stick and the communications discipline required to make it land with the right audience.

Governance Is Not the Poor Cousin of ESG. It Is Its Foundation.

Benjamin’s substantive argument goes further than the article’s.

The PA Future piece frames governance as the neglected component of ESG that investors should attend to more. Benjamin’s position is that governance is not a component of ESG at all. It is the precondition for ESG to be anything other than marketing.

“Good governance is the cornerstone that leads good business. So the fact that it is sort of so often forgotten as being a part of the ESG programme is mind blowing to me.”

The logic is clean. A company with weak governance, a board that lacks independence, executives whose pay is not tied to long-term performance, oversight structures that cannot hold management to account, cannot credibly pursue an environmental or social strategy. The strategy exists on paper. The structure that would deliver it does not.

The PA Future article makes a version of this argument. It does not name the mechanism clearly enough, in Benjamin’s view, to give investors the practical direction they need.

Moving ESG from the Bottom Line to the Top

Benjamin’s magic wand answer connects the governance argument to communications strategy.

He would move ESG from the bottom line to the top: from a cost to be managed to a driver of revenue to be understood and articulated. That is not a proposal to make ESG purely commercial. It is a proposal to change how it is framed inside organisations and in conversation with boards.

“Your ESG leaders and teams should not be tucked away in some room all eating granola bars and cycling to work. Those days are over. They need to be in the room, part of the conversation, and seeing the same data that you are.”

The governance argument and the communications argument connect at that point. A well-governed company gives its ESG function the access, the data, and the organisational standing to contribute to commercial strategy rather than run alongside it.

“There is no right way or wrong way to do ESG. But there is a right way or wrong way to talk about it. Start with your audience. Start with what matters to them.”

Whether the investment community reads that instruction as seriously as the PA Future article intends its governance argument to be read is, as of now, open.