Inside the Moody’s ESG Solutions mass lay-offs: ‘like colleagues had been abducted by aliens’: what it felt like for staff…
Plus 23 staff at Novethic in Paris still in the dark on their future.
The story that rarely gets told is what it feels like to be on staff when a wave of redundancies hits.
I spoke to a number of insiders at Moody’s ESG solutions about their experience when I reported that the firm had made upwards of a hundred staff redundant earlier this month after Moody’s announced a strategic tie-up with MSCI to take the latter’s ESG data for its clients, dramatically paring back its own ESG data business.
On Monday July 1, staff at Moody’s ESG solutions began to receive the first, unexpected e-mails notifying them of “HR meeting referrals”.
Few felt it was likely to be good news. Word spread on staff chat networks asking if anyone knew what was happening.
The next thing people received were personal What’s App messages from colleagues that had been made redundant and immediately locked out of the company communications (e-mail, chat, Slack, etc) systems; a common practice for redundancies.
One staff member told me it was “totally out of the blue, no-one had any idea what was happening, it was mayhem.”
Later that day came the announcement on Linked In regarding the Moody’s ESG Solutions tie up with MSCI.
By Friday of the same week, staff said there was still no plan as to what was happening; insiders said the roles of retained staff seemed rather random.
One said: “The last 48 hours have been hell. Furious colleagues, furious customers, some colleagues have gone immediately, some are held on to conduct "BAU" until December, some fired and then re-hired - chaos.”
Among the personnel kept on, some said there was a feeling of being ‘reputationally exposed’, involved in selling/working with a new product they knew nothing about (MSCI data), as opposed to one they’d been dealing with for years, but that had just been axed.
In addition, staff said there had been several new updates of the Moody’s ESG research data rolled out recently to clients, making the MSCI deal harder to comprehend.
Staff said the speed and the extent of the job cuts had shocked them, but that they’d been more upset by the lack of explanations and updates from the company.
More broadly, insiders said the difficulties had started a few years earlier as senior staff from the former Vigeo Eiris business (the precursor to Moody’s ESG Solutions) departed because they could not see that Moody’s was genuinely integrating ESG into its broader business or into a strategic priority. As experienced staff left, they took legacy methodology and IT experience with them. Staff said their replacements were often less experienced, leading to a drop in staff morale.
Another team member who had seen a couple of previous redundancy rounds said it felt like colleagues had been “abducted by aliens.”
They said: “You’d be in a Teams meeting together in the morning, and by the afternoon you’re getting What’s App messages from colleagues telling you they’ve been fired; no information from the company. No internal communication, no external communication, and then avoidance of the subject by management at all costs, which is ironic because it’s all anyone is talking about! The remaining staff are just kept in the dark. It’s Orwellian really.”
One staff member said there was only one relief from the redundancy chaos; empathy and sympathy from market peers: “The number of messages and calls from former colleagues, customers, competitors, other professionals and MSCI staff asking about the welfare of the legacy Vigeo Eiris staff has just been overwhelming. It really is the best of the industry in action.”
As for Moody’s?
Well, I put my calls and e-mails into the company’s spokespeople asking for comment on a mass redundancy and the effective shuttering of the ESG business.
But there was no answer…
No answer chez Novethic either as staff wait for news
Thoughts are with the 23 staff at Novethic, the respected French media and research group as they continue to be in the dark over whether their parent company, France’s Caisse des Dépôts sovereign wealth investment group, will roll over its funding for the 2025-2028 period and keep Novethic open.
The Caisse has already ended the leadership mandate of chief executive, Anne-Catherine Husson-Traore, who, for the time being, takes up the role of Director of Publications at Novethic.
But I understand that the Caisse has not yet responded to a recent open letter by journalists at Novethic asking for clarity on the continued funding of the organisation from the beginning of next year.
A statement published by the Caisse at the beginning of this week merely said that the Caisse was “evolving the governance” of Novethic, and that the Caisse itself would become titular President of Novethic represented by Hélène Gerbet, an operational head at the Caisse with deep HR experience, but little to no background in sustainability, research or media.
Gerbet replaces Nathalie Tubiana, Director of Finance and Sustainable Policy at the Caisse who announced her resignation as Novethic’s President concurrent with the Caisse’s decision to end Husson-Traore’s CEO mandate.
Novethic occupies a dual role at the Caisse as an internal, strategic research and journalism unit on sustainability, which had recently developed a paid-for research platform. It is 100% financed by the Caisse: a change in that financing would leave a big hole in thoughtful ESG research and journalism, particularly in France, which has held itself out as a leader in climate change policy and sustainability via its big finance institutions, none moreso than the Caisse des Dépôts…
Thanks for your thorough investigative work Hugh to unmask the extreme volatility in both staffing up and down in all things ESG for at least the last 20+ years it seems. The blowback from the GOP fiction and friction, and bundling all things that protect people and the planet together under one roof and calling it collusion or worse is dystopian and has had an outsized impact in so-called ESG-hushing, which, in turn, accelerated the talent flight. It’s time to move beyond ESG…and reboot.
Thank you for monitoring these developments and keeping us informed as to the evolution of a movement motivated by both pragmatism and prophecy.
The "pragmatic" focus was on the market value of integrating normative (ethical) and evidence-based (science) criteria into financial stewardship. The "prophetic" focus was on reforming financial capitalism and widening the aperture of wealth management, in service to a better, more just + happy world.
Doing the former relies on existing assumptions and structures that function (more or less) within a set framework, thus preserving business models + modes, especially intermediary "experts."
Doing the latter calls for systems thinking, innovation, courage, and transformation. Rather than sole reliance on existing patterns and practices, slightly tweaked to suit changing tastes, it views "capitalism" through multiple lenses. How best to manage the stock and flow of multiple capitals, including ethical and spiritual, assigns "trusteesship" and "stewardship" responsibilities to both experts and "the body politic," rightly understood. Called for are new structures and individual /institutional relationships that connect proximate (ground level) and multi-tiered (local to global) experience and aspirations. The vision? A political economy rooted in civic virtue, within which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have both material + spiritual meaning.
That vision remains, but is carried out with multiple communities through an ongoing process of collaborative iteration, teaching + learning, triumph + setbacks. That layoffs have occurred, however cruel, is no surprise. The existing (old) frameworks and business models sought to capitalize, literally and figuratively, on outdated assumptions of success and performance. AI and fintech were harbingers — a far cry from the corporate equity research I carried out in the early 1980s for a nascent social responsibility mutual fund. I kept moving on, keeping my eye on the prize.
As the industry exploded 20 years later, I was both heartened and reserved. As "the field" now contracts, as hard as it is on practitioners both young + seasoned, I encourage them to keep the faith and widen the aperture. There will be new venues and opportunities for fulfilling the prophecy of a better, wiser, more just + prosperous world.