Goldman Sachs Agrees To Pay $4 Mln Penalty In ESG Fund Case : SEC

(RTTNews) - Goldman Sachs (GS) agreed to pay a $4 million penalty over U.S. regulatory charges that the bank's asset-management unit misled customers about environmental, social and governance investments.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs Asset Management, L.P. or GSAM for policies and procedures failures involving two mutual funds and one separately managed account strategy marketed as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments.

The SEC's order found that, from April 2017 until February 2020, GSAM had several policies and procedures failures involving the ESG research its investment teams used to select and monitor securities. From April 2017 until June 2018, the company failed to have any written policies and procedures for ESG research in one product, and once policies and procedures were established, it failed to follow them consistently prior to February 2020.