Sustainable & Responsible Investing News

Investors and governments are increasingly pushing for more transparency regarding the non-financial impacts of business. GRI welcomes these developments, and seeks to support companies in understanding and applying policies that enable sustainable finance performance. In this new series, GRI will share updates on the latest developments from capital markets in Europe and the world, and how it […]

Guns are big business, with lots of investors. Weapons sales in the US last year totaled $12.4 billion, up from $10.3 billion in 2016. It’s the fiduciary duty of the diversified investment manager to look beyond the performance of a handful of weapons companies to how gun sales affect the broader economy. Take BlackRock. The […]

Global Sustain Group, organizes a Masterclass Workshop on: “ESG Investments & Integration. From Nice to Mainstream. Why & how considering ESG Metrics can benefit corporate and fund strategy? Latest market trends”. The event will be held on Wednesday, April 25, at EarlyBird Berlin, Germany*. Highlights of a new ESG & Impact Investing Market & Benchmark […]

by Hank Boerner – Chair, G&A Institute The “media” that we choose to get our news, commentary, research results, even crossword puzzles, movie reviews, the latest scientific papers and maybe information about what our friends are up to (such as “social media”) are usually self-selected.   We tune in to what we want to read or […]

The evidence is clear: Diverse teams are more creative, evaluate more facts to form better decisions, and have a higher likelihood of achieving both short and long-term goals than homogeneous teams. Gender diversity is just one aspect of any given team’s composition, but an important one. Sheryl Brown uses her voice to shine a light […]

The third CEO Investor Forum, held on February 26 in New York City, has received a lot of attention in the media as the effort to end short-termism on Wall Street gains increasing traction. Responsible Investor and the Financial Times wrote pre-event sneak peeks and Business Insider wrote five articles coming out of the CEO […]

This year’s 8th annual Sustainable Investing Challenge has attracted the most geographically dispersed slate of finalists yet, with an equally diverse offering of investment proposals. Graduate students from schools in India, China, Singapore and across the U.S. and Europe made up more than 100 teams from 20 countries submitting proposals to this year’s 8th annual Kellogg-Morgan […]

It’s proxy season again, when shareholders in public companies can file resolutions on issues they would like considered at annual company meetings. A new report offers a look at 2017’s proxy efforts, and a preview of those to come in 2018. Proxy Preview 2018 gives an overview of the more than 400 shareholder resolutions that were […]

The rapidly changing climate, a global water crisis, and profound and ongoing human rights abuses undermine not only business operations, but also the lives and livelihoods of employees, customers and stakeholders. Investors—both large and small—are ramping up sustainable investment strategies focused on environmental, social and governance issues. In the United States alone, sustainable investing grew […]

Green Alpha’s Chief Operating Officer, Betsy Moszeter, and First Affirmative Financial Network’s VP of Sales and Marketing, Danielle Burns, have a ton in common, including their zodiac sign (Libra!), and a love of craft cocktails and delicious food. They’re also driven women with a passion for increasing the quality of and demand for impact investing. […]

Climate change, the low-carbon transition and sustainable development pose some of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The global transition is well underway and has urgent and wide-ranging implications for companies, policymakers and investors. This requires integrated thinking across the board from corporates – but do workplace pensions schemes and business strategies sufficiently reflect […]

Sustainalytics has released “10 for 2018,” a report that evaluates risks and opportunities in the coming year. On the upside, Sustainalytics finds that ESG-driven investing will continue to increase in 2018. Global responsible investing now totals $23 trillion, a rise of 25 percent since 2014, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. The rapid growth […]

The Carbon Tracker Initiative, an independent financial think tank, announced today that its in-depth analysis of the impact of climate change on a company’s exposure to carbon transition risk is available through 2˚C Scenario Analysis Tool on the Bloomberg App Portal at {APPS TRACK <GO>}.Bloomberg Terminal subscribers can now access the Carbon Tracker Initiative’s research […]

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., February 9, 2018 /3BL Media/ – The United Nations Global Compact, in partnership with PIMCO and ENEL, convened a two-day symposium to mobilize private finance and investment around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hosted at PIMCO headquarters in Newport Beach, U.S.A., the event convened approximately 100 leaders representing public policy, pension funds, […]

by Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times American markets are spinning on a carousel. As fourth-quarter corporate earnings tumble out this week, analysts are digesting every digit, leaving share prices swinging. But if Bill McNabb, chairman of Vanguard, has his way, this carousel may soon spin differently. This month, a group of […]

Yeah, you heard us right. This pullback is awesome. Dear Friends, We’ve received a lot of questions the last couple days about our reaction to recent market declines. We’re more than happy to share our view. What’s causing the pullback? In short, inflation worries caused by the news that wages for American workers increased in […]

TORONTO, February 5, 2018 /3BL Media/ – Scotiabank today proudly announced its support of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). “As Canada’s international bank, Scotiabank has witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of natural disasters such as wildfires, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes in communities in which the bank operates around the globe,” said Brian Porter, President […]

Investors make key announcements on low-carbon commitments; release new investor agenda to accelerate and scale up action on climate change February 2, 2018 /3BL Media/ – More than 450 investor, company and capital market leaders convened at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk today to map out the next steps for increased action on climate change. The […]

The World Economic Forum (WEF) annually convenes business leaders, government officials, celebrities and other luminaries in the Swiss village of Davos-Klosters to explore societal issues and develop or work to advance solutions to same. This year’s convocation was staged over four days n late-January. Some of the highlights for you: UN Sustainable Development Goals in […]

Volume & Velocity Those may well be the key characteristics of developments in corporate sustainability and in sustainable investing in the year 2018. Linda-Eling Lee, Global Head of Research for MSCI’s ESG Research Group and her colleague Matt Moscardi (Head of Research Financial Sector, ESG) this week described what they are projecting in the traditional […]

  Ray Dalio wants to see more “social impact investing.” Yes, that Ray Dalio, author of Principles: Life & Work, a best-selling business book that proselytizes for “radical transparency” as guidelines for his hard-charging, high-octane hedge fund firm. As the founder, chairman, and CIO of the $160 billion Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, Dalio’s […]

Illustration by Benoit Tardif While the sea ice is melting in the Arctic at the fastest pace in 1,500 years and the California forests are burning at a rate greater than at any time in recorded history, the silver lining peeking through is that the world’s most important investors are no longer missing in action […]

Illustration by Benoit Tardif When the Asset Owners Disclosure Project released its 2017 Global Climate Index last April, it came as no surprise that Canadian pension funds continued to lag behind their peers in addressing climate risks. No fund earned the designation of “Leader,” and nearly one quarter of the country’s largest asset owners were […]

Traditional Corporate Governance Focus Expanding to Encompass  ISS Environmental & Social QualityScores for 1,500 Public Companies Coming in January… Expanding to 5,000 Companies in Q2… by Hank Boerner – G&A Institute Chair A significant new player is now entering the mix of the growing number of organizations providing institutional investors with ESG rankings and data. […]

An interview with Flavia Micilotta, Eurosif’s Executive Director Sustainable and responsible investment is helping mobilize and direct finance towards building a more inclusive, stable and greener European economy. We talked to Flavia Micilotta, Executive Director at Eurosif, to discover how. ​Eurosif is the pan-European sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) membership organization whose mission is to […]

As the socially-responsible investing (SRI), ESG, and impact investing movements have gained steam, so has the number of companies offering products aligned with investors’ values. Providing low-cost, low-effort personal investment options, U.S. robo-advisors currently have more than $100 billion in assets, and are estimated to reach $2.2 trillion by 2020. To differentiate themselves within the […]

This year has been challenging for sustainability in many respects, but there have also been exciting developments in the sustainability reporting landscape. In this short series, we look back at GRI’s efforts, and at what 2018 has in store. ​A recent report revealed that the world needs to pick up the pace if we are […]

The stage was set in 1970 by Professor Milton Friedman, who wrote in a New York Times Magazine essay: The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. He famously said in conclusion: “here is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its […]

Harvard Business Review is one of the most powerful of external influences for the corporate C-suite.  Ideas, concepts and themes appearing in the pages (digital and print) of HBR create important initiatives in American companies. HBR editors are focusing these days on corporate sustainability in various dimensions. Remember the debut of the “Shared Value” by […]