Changes in Business ESG Priorities in the Post-COVID World

Over the last 60 years the ESG concept evolved from traditional CSR issues to 17 modern SDGs. Depending on the international economic situation in some periods social problems were more important, in others, more often, ecology was more on the agenda. The author proves that both transnational companies and politicians from different countries tends to pay more attention to the ecological aspects. At the same time in all historic periods Russian companies were more concerned with the social aspects. The hypothesis of the paper is that COVID-19 could have changed the ESG investment priorities. Based on the non-financial reports of the leading trans-national companies the author comes to the conclusion that companies from different industries show various ESG strategies in the new conditions that surprisingly are not correlated with financial losses from pandemic. In general, overall ESG financing slightly decreased. Mining companies, kept the main focus on environmental projects, the new trend is characterized by an insignificant increase in the share of social projects, mostly inward oriented. A complete opposite situation is present in transporting companies, in all researched cases a sharp turn towards socially-oriented programs is clearly seen within the pre-COVID volume. The manufacturing companies' ESG priorities have not been affected by COVID conditions