Sustainable & Responsible Investing News

As [miners] tunnel through the rocks, They discover precious stones… But where can wisdom be found? —Job 28. (Good News Translation) The grimy world of coal production brightened briefly in February, when Swiss mining giant Glencore announced it would cap its global production of thermal and coking coal at its current capacity of 150 million […]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of corporate sustainability and how it’s not delivering on the promise of a sustainable business model. Before you contest that fact, remember that in 2018 CO2 emissions hit their highest level in recent history, plastic pollution continues to get worse and is now in our food chain, biodiversity loss is accelerating, […]

Ratings, rankings, scores, best of lists – these are increasingly important to corporate issuers and for investors.  The popular CBS TV Network nighttime host David Letterman for many years provided us with periods of laughter with his well-known top 10 list segments. (Example: The Top 10 Stupid Things Americans Say to Brits.) There’s long been […]

Bill McGlashan, co-founder of the Rise Fund, resigned earlier this month, following his involvement in the recent US college bribery scam. McGlashan was one of 50 people indicted. The Rise Fund was launched by US private equity firm TPG in 2016, and counts high-profile names including U2’s Bono, Jeff Skoll, Paul Polman and Richard Branson on […]

SAO PAULO, March 21, 2019 /3BL Media/— Companies and investors joined representatives from Government and the UN today to discuss how the private sector can play a greater role in directing capital towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Launched at B3 Headquarters in São Paulo, the inaugural SDG Investment Forum focused on the opportunities and challenges of […]

Investors all over the world — from large pension funds to young first-time investors — are increasingly demanding information on the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impacts of their investments. In response to this demand, Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, will now indicate what percentage of issuers within each ETF are in violation of […]

SAO PAULO, March 21, 2019 /3BL Media/— Companies and investors joined representatives from Government and the UN today to discuss how the private sector can play a greater role in directing capital towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Launched at B3 Headquarters in São Paulo, the inaugural SDG Investment Forum focused on the opportunities and challenges […]

Gone are the days when penny pinchers walked into their local banks and signed onto whatever investments their financial advisors recommended. A deluge of young investors is shaking up the investment community, demanding that their hard-earned savings do more than just tick upwards until they retire in Florida. And since, let’s face it, few of […]

The European Union adopted a Sustainable Finance Action Plan in May 2018; the package of measures included a proposal for a regulation to establish a framework to facilitate sustainable investment.  The aim is to create a unified classification system or taxonomy on what could be considered to be “an environmentally-sustainable economic opportunity”. Also in the […]

Every quarter Whole Planet Foundation aggregates field metrics from our microfinance partners who are disbursing and collecting microcredit loans to people living in poverty. With a small loan – the current average first size is $178 – an impoverished entrepreneur has the opportunity to create or expand a home-based business and generate income for herself […]

For all the potential benefits of impact investing, major questions are still to be resolved. A round-up of thoughts from industry insiders across Europe – plus a handful of solutions. Ever more funders are venturing into impact investing: globally, the number of impact investors rose from fewer than 50 pre-1997 to well over 200 in 2017, according […]

Part one of a two-part series on why index funds help prop up an obsolete economy, and where you should be investing instead. Originally published by Worth Magazine, authored by Garvin Jabusch If you’re fortunate enough to be able to save for the future by investing in stocks, you’re probably invested in an index fund. The […]

Have you caught any Canadian news lately? If so, you’d know the Montreal-based engineering firm, SNC-Lavalin, is at the centre of a major controversy in Canadian politics right now. We won’t rehash all the gory political details, but suffice it to say, the scandal hasn’t helped SNC’s investors. The stock has taken a nosedive as […]

Why Shifting Gender Balance in Wealth Brings Ripple Effects As women take impact investing by storm, Amy Brown, 3p’s finance reporter, shares how various shifts in the investing world have led to more women assuming leadership roles in finance, with more women entrepreneurs reaping the benefits. As we recognize Women’s History Month 2019, Brown shows us […]

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., March 5, 2019 /3BL Media/ — The UN Global Compact and the Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative together with partners today rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in support of gender equality. To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, more than 80 stock exchanges will participate in the […]

A 2018 survey by Morgan Stanley took the pulse of U.S. asset managers (with in-depth telephone interviews) to determine the level of adoption of sustainable investing approaches by asset managers in the United States. Results:  in the report “Sustainable Signals: Growth and Opportunity in Asset Management” a majority of managers said they now see sustainable […]

As awareness dawns of the increasing risks of climate change, business and government have developed new tools and mechanisms to promote pro-social and environmentally friendly investment. But one U.K. analyst is pointing out that such high standards could backfire by restricting capital to many developing nations that need it most. Charles Robertson is the London-based […]

NEW YORK, February 21, 2019 /3BL Media/ – A majority of U.S. asset managers are now practicing sustainable investing, viewing it as a strategic business imperative. In a new survey entitled Sustainable Signals: Growth and Opportunity in Asset Management, from the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing and Bloomberg, 75% of respondents reported that their […]

Although 2018 was a tough year for stock markets around the world, it marked a turning point for responsible investment in Canada. According to the 2018 Canadian Responsible Investment Trends Report, more than $2 trillion in Canadian assets (just over half of all investments) now use one or more responsible investment strategies. Big investors like […]

NEW YORK, February 13, 2019 /3BL Media/ – To build on the growing body of global corporate social investment research, CECP: The CEO Force for Good announced the launch of a multinational inquiry into shared themes and trends in corporate social investments around the world. CECP’s Global Exchange seeks to unite country-based, mission-driven corporate social […]

His Holiness Pope Francis Faithful followers: 1.2 billion Catholics Fund management body: Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican Bank Mandate: To serve the global mission of the Catholic Church through the administration of the entrusted assets and providing payment services to the Holy See and related entities. The celebration […]

  By Jessica Caron –  G&A Sustainability Report Analyst Intern A comparison of the SASB Meat, Poultry & Dairy Standard — which is designed for use by companies involved in the raising, slaughtering, processing and packaging of animal food product — to the GRI Standards must start with the observation that the GRI Standards are […]

Organized, and even disorganized, religion oversees large amounts of assets. From the centuries of wealth accumulated by the Roman Catholic Church, to the Church of Scientology’s operating as a lucrative business that pays its recruiters from new-member revenues, churches are rich. This leads inevitably to the question of whether, as investors, it is possible to […]

It is often the case that many us may not give our monthly energy utility company a second thought — unless there is an issue with the power going out or the bill is too high. However, for those of us working in the sustainability field, the Energy Utilities Industry is one of the most important […]

Workers who helped install Mongolia’s largest solar energy farm in the Sumber Soum area of the country’s Govisümber province with a few of the solar panels they put in place. The solar facility began generating power on January 28, 2019. (Photo courtesy Green Climate Fund) Posted for media use. By Sunny Lewis SONGDO, Incheon, South […]

The industry titan changed the way millions of people invest, but indexing has greater implications now than it did 50 years ago. Published in Worth Magazine By Garvin Jabusch John C. Bogle, a champion of stock investing for average people, passed away on January 16. I didn’t personally know Bogle, but I was fortunate to […]

By Emilie Ho – G&A Sustainability Report Analyst Intern During my analysis, I found that although many of the material disclosures that the SASB Standards suggested for disclosure by the Agriculture Products Industry are in line with the GRI’s Topic Disclosures, there are also a number of material topics that SASB advances for disclosure that […]

  With additional reporting by Toby A. A. Heaps Over nearly a decade and a half of writing a weekly column and several books under the Ecoholic banner, I ranked endless streams of products from worst to best in terms of planetary impact, from beer companies to banks, footwear to ethical funds. Many weeks, judging […]

Last year, Larry Fink’s annual letter to CEOs forged its way into public and corporate consciousness. In it, Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest investment firm, made the bold declaration that “to prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive […]

With the recent publication of the much-anticipated “Report on US Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing Trends 2018” issued by US SIF showing that ESG has hit the capital markets’ mainstream, with $1-in-$4 in the US (by professional investment managers now incorporating ESG), and the recent petition seeking mandatory ESG reporting submitted to the Securities & […]

Impact Investing & ESG   The Rise Fund Spin-Off Marks Growth of Impact Investing U.S. private equity firm TPG and U2 star Bono’s announcement earlier this week that they have created a new organization for measuring the social and environmental returns of investments appears to be a signal of growing investor demand for tools to […]

In the last two decades, sustainability reporting has gone from an exercise for the largest companies to a necessity to attract investors and meet local and international regulation. But the main benefit of sustainability reporting remains that companies best understand their impacts and can improve their bottom line along with the world around them. The […]

In Q3 2018, we saw that the economy is functioning at a high level. It was a quarter of unusually rapid economic growth in the U.S., enough that the Fed took the word “accommodative” out of their September FOMC Statement, meaning they estimate that the economy is healthy enough to no longer require unusually cheap […]