Social investing
Impact Investing Won’t Save Capitalism, But Its Example Might
Jul 22nd, 2020 | Filed under: Private Equity, Social investing, Newly Added, Asset allocation, Socially responsible investing, Equity Types of Private Equity, Asset Allocation Models, Other Issues in Private Investments, ESG, Private Investments, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsBy Michael O’Leary and Warren Valdmanis GIIN’s 10th Anniversary report highlights new records, but what’s the endgame? When the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) issued its first survey a decade ago, the term “impact investing” had only been coined three years earlier. Just 24 investors responded. In GIIN’s tenth anniversaryRead More
Fossil Fuel: Divestment By the Numbers
Jan 16th, 2020 | Filed under: Private Equity, Social investing, Debt Types of Private Equity, Newly Added, Venture capital, Socially responsible investing, Equity Types of Private Equity, Alternative energy, Other Issues in Private Investments, The Alts Industry, Private Investments, SRI and Clean Energy, Allocating to Alts, Finance & Economics, Other Topics in AltsBill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s wealthiest humans, attracted a good deal of attention last fall by saying, “Divestment, to date, probably has reduced about zero tons of emissions.” He thereby put his finger on a key fault line amongst those who regard ESG investmentRead More
How Expensive Are ESG Stocks?
Jan 12th, 2020 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, The Alts Industry, Other Topics in Alts
By Nicolas Rabener, FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION Europeans seem far more focused on the environment than Americans, which might be considered unusual given that both share an interest in the outdoors and have great national parks. Perhaps this is explained by Europe’s higher population density, which puts living space at aRead More
Ebenezer Scrooge: An Alternative View
Dec 23rd, 2019 | Filed under: Alpha-centric Companies, Social investing, Industry Size & Managers, Newly Added, Asset Managers, Institutional Investing, Socially responsible investing, What about beta?, The Alts Industry, Institutional Asset Management, Hedge Funds, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsBy Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Ebenezer Scrooge was not exactly a cuddly CEO. The way he treated poor Bob Cratchit alone would not have exactly put Scrooge & Marley Ltd. in the top quartile of the Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings, as he routinely gutted any notion of social responsibility.Read More
Of Colossal Fools and Fossil Fuels
Oct 15th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, The Global Economy & Currencies, What about beta?, Alternative energy, Business News, Economics, Climate change, Macroeconomics, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsBy Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association The saying “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” has its origins all the way back to the 1600’s when most of the carbon now in our atmosphere was “safely” encased in limestone and other rock formations within theRead More
‘Greenwashing:’ Why the Glass is Half Full
Sep 19th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Other Issues in Private Investments, Operationally Intensive Real Assets, The Alts Industry, Emerging Alternative Investments, Private Investments, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsThe term “greenwashing” is not a compliment. It isn’t supposed to be a good thing. Greenwashing means the re-spraying of old products and services so that they seem to comply with standards for socially responsible investment. Many investors want to put their money to work in ways that reflect theirRead More
Can Sustainable Investing Sustain Itself in Japan?
Sep 15th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Alternative energy, Other Issues in Private Investments, The Alts Industry, Emerging Alternative Investments, Private Investments, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsAdvocates of sustainable investing in Japan are struggling, according to a new report co-authored by William Burchart and Jessica Ziegler of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP). Their research is based on a literature review and discussions with more than 50 industry experts. The paper was released Sept. 6 and isRead More
ESG: WHAT’S UNDER THE HOOD?
Jul 14th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, The Alts Industry, SRI and Clean EnergyBy Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) ESG INVESTING – SIMPLE OR COMPLEX? Investing is complicated as it is simple and complex at the same time. Common advice for new investors is to pursue a buy-and-hold approach for long-term wealth creation. Although this strategy has worked out great in the U.S.Read More
The Environmental Road to the Future is Paved…in Green
Jul 1st, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Climate change, The Alts Industry, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsBy Diane Harrison In January of this year, the World Economic Forum published an article, A Business Model for Sustainability, which highlighted a couple of key points relating to the growing interest in green business practices: Global finance is also inching toward sustainability. For example, environmental, social, and governance assetsRead More
How Hedge Funds Use Corporate Social Responsibility Considerations
May 30th, 2019 | Filed under: Hedge Fund Strategies, Social investing, Equity Hedge Funds, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Event-Driven Hedge Funds, The Alts Industry, Hedge Funds, SRI and Clean EnergyA new study by Jun Duanmu and three colleagues examines hedge fund use of matters of corporate social responsibility. The authors work from an asset-weighted composite measure of CSR by fund, in order to seek the difference in financial performance of those hedge funds with high CSR investment and thoseRead More
Impact Investing: How Big is the Market?
Apr 28th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, The Alts IndustryThe Global Impact Investing Network recently issued a report on the size of the market for impact investing. The report explores how many investors want to invest how much of their money in ways that will do good for the planet and for the human social structures it hosts, asRead More
Was 2014 a Turning Point for ESG Investing?
Mar 7th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Institutional Investing, Socially responsible investing, The Alts Industry, Institutional Asset Management, Emerging Alternative Investments, SRI and Clean EnergyAmundi, the French asset management firm that, less than a year ago, launched the world’s largest green bond and emerging markets-focused investment, has just posted a scholarly discussion, “How ESG Investing Has Impacted the Asset Pricing in the Equity Market.” The paper begins by saying that academic study of ESG firmsRead More
Steps to Attain Sustainable Development Goals
Feb 19th, 2019 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Institutional Investing, Socially responsible investing, Other Issues in Private Investments, Climate change, The Alts Industry, Institutional Asset Management, Private Investments, SRI and Clean EnergyAmber Fairbanks, a portfolio manager at Mirova, a division of Natixis, recently talked to Clarice Avery, a Natixis investment strategist on Asset TV about potential long-term investment opportunity in the ESG space. She described ESG as a way in which investors can benefit from long-term secular trends rather than tryingRead More
10 Climate Change Actions for Pension Fund Managers
Oct 28th, 2018 | Filed under: Consultants, Social investing, Newly Added, Institutional Investing, Socially responsible investing, Climate change, The Alts Industry, Institutional Asset Management, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsThe International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) has put out a paper on climate change and on the difference it makes for investments. The issue of climate change has, in recent years, gone from “being considered a niche issue to one of potentially major financial consequences for all investors,” oneRead More
Private Debt and Impact Investors
May 20th, 2018 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Other Issues in Private Investments, Private Investments, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsA new study by the Symbiotics and GIIN research teams looks at private debt impact funds (PDIFs); that is, “independent investment vehicles that allocate on average more than 85% of their portfolios to private debt” and that look to the environmental and/or social impact their allocations will have. The goalRead More
The Performance of Impact Investments
Dec 26th, 2017 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Other Topics in AltsThe Global Impact Investing Network has offered its own take on a much discussed question: do “impact investing” and its variants under various names – sustainable investing, socially conscious investing, ESG investing, etc. – work? And, if so, how well? It looks at this question in a very granular way,Read More
Institutions that Integrate ESG Considerations: 6 Types
Jun 8th, 2017 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Alternative energy, Climate change, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsA new white paper from the Investor Responsibility Research Center (the IRRC Institute) in conjunction with Sustainalytics looks at the various approaches that investors, institutional investors in particular, might and do take to integrate ESG issues into their portfolio decisions. Specifically, the IRRC and Sustainalytics, two Manhattan-based research groups longRead More
Notes on Impact Investing in Europe
Feb 28th, 2017 | Filed under: Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, SRI and Clean Energy, Other Topics in AltsThe Science Communication Unit (SCU) of the University of the West of England has produced what it calls a “future brief,” a discussion of environmental impact investing focused especially on the European context. The term “impact investing” itself is only about a decade old. The idea, under various guises, isRead More
Impact Investing: The Impacts, Measurement and Profit
Oct 30th, 2016 | Filed under: Alpha-centric Companies, Social investing, Newly Added, Socially responsible investing, Other Topics in AltsOne candidate for the title “next new thing” is “impact investing.” As the term suggests, this refers to investing with an eye to the ways in which the investor’s decisions make an impact upon society beyond his own portfolio. This sounds a lot like socially responsible investing, or like itsRead More
Climate Finance: A Priority for the MDBs
Jul 15th, 2015 | Filed under: Social investing, Socially responsible investing, Technology, Climate changeA new report from the World Bank says that six multilateral development banks delivered more than $28 billion in financing in 2014 that "address climate change" in one of two ways, mitigation or adaptation. Read More
The Old Puzzle of SRI: India and France
Jul 12th, 2015 | Filed under: Social investing, Alpha Strategies, Socially responsible investing, Alpha SeekersThe conclusion of two Indian scholars in a new study supports the view that socially responsible investing is good for investors in India. But Faille worries that the battle-of-the-studies has thus far been indecisive, and that aerodynamics suggests this insect shouldn't be able to fly. Read More
Betting on Vice Doesn’t Really Pan Out
Sep 9th, 2014 | Filed under: CAPM / Alpha Theory, Social investing, Alpha Strategies, Behavioral financeChristopher Faille, inspired by Greg Richey, of California State University, San Bernardino, has a few words about socially irresponsible investing, that is, the creation of a portfolio built around destructive human vices. Read More
Windfall: a Book on the Rise of the Climate Investor Class
Aug 6th, 2014 | Filed under: Social investing, Alpha Strategies, Energy, Climate changeGuest columnist Doug Friedenberg reviews "Windfall," and looks at the potential for investing in a changing climate.Read More
One Ordinary Week in the Life of Climate Change
Jun 6th, 2014 | Filed under: Social investing(March 24 update) We present here recent anecdotals on the subject of climate change. It’s a topic that affects many industries: insurance, real estate, energy (renewable and non-), food, water, national defense, to name a few. Investment opportunities arise when there is a divergence of opinion, as is uniquely theRead More
Pension Funds and Blair’s PFI Legacy
Mar 21st, 2012 | Filed under: Infrastructure, Social investing, Institutional InvestingBritain’s Private Finance Initiative has continued through the administrations since Blair’s, and indeed has inspired emulation across the Channel. At the same time, it has stirred up a good deal of criticism, and in November 2011 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a plan to reform the PFI. One of the reform proposals is to seek broader participation by pension funds, or in pale bureaucratic jargon, “access a wider range of financing sources.”Read More