I can tell, Orsted valuations got hammered along with the overall market for wind power last year. Looks like because wind power’s come online quicker than expected and prices dropped, but I’m not sure I’m seeing the DEI angle here, other than new tech adoption can be unpredictable and volatile.

Equinor doesn’t appear to me to be as fully exposed to that one single segment of the energy market, but has alternative energy goals and is considering acquiring Orsted to help them get there with their wind power expertise. I’m wondering about the DEI angle in that example.

My firm never got much above 50 employees, but we never once made a DEI hiring decision. I can say with near full confidence (I wasn’t involved in every hire) that we never sacrificed qualification for identity. In fact, on the 100s of DEI surveys I had to complete, we never went beyond numbers of men vs women. We didn’t poll employees on their ethnic backgrounds or sexual orientations, or any other aspect of their “identities”.

I was at least never aware of investors pushing back against that (I was the IR head, so I should’ve been if there were examples). Maybe it gets harder to refuse those questions for much bigger firms - I know the rules can vary for different employee-counts and different jurisdictions.

I do feel your pain on that. I hated those surveys - and I find the idea of bucketing our payroll by identity group to be extremely off-putting. I was never hesitant in ODD meetings to say hey, we’re an EEO, but I will never start asking employees about their ethnicities or who they love, etc - color me a boomer, but that does seem the wrong approach to a “colorblind” society.


[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 01/15/2024 11:55AM]