ESG
Corporate Impact | March 23, 2023
This season’s shareholder resolutions are proxies in the ESG culture war
ImpactAlpha, March 23 – Votes on climate action, corporate political influence and reproductive rights will liven up this spring’s corporate annual general meetings. …
photo: World Economic Forum
Institutional Impact | March 16, 2023
In Larry Fink’s letter to investors, ESG is the business imperative that dare not speak its name
ImpactAlpha, March 16 – Don’t expect BlackRock to back off from ESG any time soon. Even if the acronym appears nowhere in chairman …
Return on Inclusion | March 6, 2023
Want to wring impact from ESG? Look to governance
If ESG is a foot in the door to an economy built around sustainability, inclusion and equity, then governance is the power that’s …
ESG | March 3, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: ESG in private markets
ImpactAlpha, March 3 — Limited partners in venture capital and private equity funds are deemphasizing ESG considerations, according to a survey by Adams …
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Muni Impact | March 1, 2023
The winding road to ESG standards in the municipal bond market
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 29 – In October 2021, a paper manufacturer in Kalamazoo, Michigan, issued $100 million of what it called “green bonds” through …
Policy Corner | February 24, 2023
Policymaking for workers and communities in the Year of the ‘S’ (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0CmwxgSKg ImpactAlpha. Feb. 24 – “A labor market where workers have more opportunities and have more power and have more leverage is a …
Impact Management | February 22, 2023
Streamlined, standardized and benchmarked: Optimizing impact data for capital markets
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 22 – It’s the data wonks’ time to shine. With more than $1 trillion in impact investing assets under management, investors are …
photo: dylan nolte
Policy Corner | February 21, 2023
New rules to account for a key corporate asset: employees
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 21 – Unemployment is at record lows. Manufacturing and union jobs are making a comeback. Workers are holding their employers to …
Kelly McCarthy
Impact Management | February 8, 2023
Q&A with Kelly McCarthy: Architect of IRIS+ is ready to put impact management theory into practice
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 8 – It’s not yet the holy grail of impact measurement, but IRIS+ has given investors a starting point for comparable …
ESG | February 1, 2023
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time
A crisis is usually followed by learning. If in 2022 tech private markets were defined by the crash of some of the highest-valued …
Oklahoma on the map of USA
Impact Voices | January 30, 2023
Is ESG an emergency from which the public needs protection? Oklahoma legislators ride to the rescue.
Scores of anti-ESG bills were introduced in Republican-led states in January. The onslaught continues despite the more than $1.1 billion in financial costs …
Policy Corner | January 25, 2023
The state of impact investing public policy – and opportunities for 2023
The past year has been one of both exciting growth and unexpected challenges for the impact investing industry. Amid an uncertain macroeconomic forecast …
Eric Glass
Muni Impact | January 24, 2023
‘You can’t do impact on a passive basis’: Q&A with activist muni-investor Eric Glass
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 24 – After 15 years as an analyst, trader, and portfolio manager at AllianceBernstein, Eric Glass was asked in 2015 to develop …
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announcing Rivian's $5 billion electric vehicle factory.
ESG | January 24, 2023
Local economic benefits spur GOP governors to tack toward the center on ESG
Last year’s attacks on ESG seemed to be a final nail in GOP’s “pro-business” coffin. The backlash to consideration of environmental, social and …
Muni Impact | January 12, 2023
The billion-dollar cost to the ESG culture wars
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 12 – Banks that use environmental, social, or governance, or ESG frameworks in their investing practice are being targeted by state legislators …
Newly elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy
Institutional Impact | January 11, 2023
GOP ditches ‘pro-business’ with attacks on ESG that hurt corporations, investors – and red states
Editor’s note: ImpactAlpha contributing editor Imogen Rose-Smith, a longtime senior writer for Institutional Investor, contributes a bi-weekly column on the policies, practices and …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | January 3, 2023
Big ideas and predictions for ESG in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 3 – ESG – for enterprise operations and investment decision-making that account for environmental, social and governance considerations – took a beating …
ESG | January 2, 2023
A baker’s dozen of shareable studies that make the case for ESG
ESG will continue to be a hot button in 2023. But research over the past year showed that environmental, social and governance investments …
"The Fearless Girl" statue facing Charging Bull in Lower Manhattan
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 22, 2022
Using ESG and impact to sort leaders from laggards in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 22 – It’s not about the scores. It’s about the solutions. ESG – shorthand for the consideration of environmental, social and governance considerations …
ESG | December 19, 2022
Elon’s reputation tanks along with his credibility on ESG
Crypto-evangelist Dan McArdle was apparently peeved with ESG when he tweeted: “Clothes dryers in the US use more energy than all bitcoin mining… …
Corporate Impact | December 14, 2022
Are Elon Musk’s Twitter escapades putting Tesla’s climate impact at risk?
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 14 – Some Tesla shareholders are frustrated that CEO Elon Musk is hurting the electric vehicle maker’s share price with his acquisition …
Muni Impact | December 12, 2022
Cities embrace ESG in muni bonds even as overall market dips
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 12 – Municipal bond issues are down 17% this year compared to 2021 as interest rates have spiked, according to SIFMA. But …
Muni Impact | December 8, 2022
S&P Global acquires Shades of Green’s climate-risk assessments for bonds
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 8 – Issuers of social, green and other sustainability bonds seek “second-party opinions,” or SPOs, from ratings agencies like S&P Global to …
Source: Amplify ESG
Policy Corner | December 5, 2022
Pro-ESG forces rally to confront backlash against corporate accountability, workers rights and risk management
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 5 – It took a while, but advocates for the integration of environmental, social and governance factors in investment decisions are …
Institutional Shift | December 5, 2022
ESG is dead? European asset owners in venture capital think differently
The backlash to environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investing is in full swing in the U.S. In Europe, asset owners are to …
Policy Corner | November 23, 2022
For pension fund managers, Department of Labor puts ESG back on the table – again
ImpactAlpha, Nov.23 – Cannot! Can so! Just as some states are trying to block so-called ESG investing, the U.S. Department of Labor has …
Institutional Impact | November 22, 2022
Beware of paper billionaires bearing gifts, and other lessons of the FTX implosion
Editor’s note: ImpactAlpha contributing editor Imogen Rose-Smith, a longtime senior writer for Institutional Investor, contributes a bi-weekly column on the policies, practices and strategies of the …
ESG | November 8, 2022
Anticipating election wins, conservative politicians escalate attacks on ESG ‘collusion.’
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 8 – Republicans are feeling emboldened as Americans head to the polls for today’s midterm elections. Just days ago, a group …
Impact Investing | November 2, 2022
What’s at stake for climate, ESG and impact investors in the U.S. midterm elections
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 2 – The annual global climate summit known as COP27, this year in Egypt, will coincide with next week’s midterm elections …
Impact Voices | October 27, 2022
Can’t tell the players without a scorecard: Sorting out ESG, impact and sustainability
The Land of ESG is embroiled in a two-front war. Identifying the combatants and their arguments may help practitioners keep track of the …
Clean Energy | October 27, 2022
Saudi Aramco launches a $1.5 billion fund for energy-transition technologies
ImpactAlpha, October 27 – Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco announced a $1.5 billion venture fund to invest in in carbon capture and storage, …
Impact Management | October 27, 2022
How private equity can unlock impact alpha with ESG data from portfolio companies
Terms like “small” and “local” have become shorthand for “ethical” – a way for consumers and businesses to signal virtue. Meanwhile, having large …
Impact Voices | October 19, 2022
Employees: The Missing ‘E’ in ESG
Workers, the people most important to capitalism, have been buried in the ‘S’ in ESG, for environmental, social, and governance risk factors in …
Impact Management | October 17, 2022
To ESG or not to ESG? Politicization complicates messaging, but trendlines are clear
ImpactAlpha, Oct. 17 – Politicians, or rather, ex-pols, were on the hustings last week with seemingly opposite advice for executives and investors trying to …
Return on Inclusion | October 17, 2022
In tough times, corporate leaders must double down on diversity, equity and inclusion
History has shown that our nation’s most vulnerable workers tend to be hit hardest during economic downturns. During the height of the pandemic, …
The Net Purpose team | Photo by Net Purpose.
ESG | October 13, 2022
Net Purpose raises £10 million for a fact-base of social and environmental performance
ImpactAlpha, October 13 — London-based data analytics provider Net Purpose has raised £10 million to help investors measure the performance of their portfolios …
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Credit: Patagonia
Institutional Impact | October 12, 2022
How Patagonia’s private plan for the public good inadvertently reveals the limits of impact investing
Editor’s note: ImpactAlpha contributing editor Imogen Rose-Smith, a longtime senior writer for Institutional Investor, contributes a bi-weekly column on the policies, practices and strategies of the …
QED portfolio company RestLess is fighting ageism in the U.K. Photo: Shutterstock
Impact Voices | October 6, 2022
How venture firm QED Investors is embracing ESG to strengthen its fintech portfolio
As a concept, ESG is nothing new. The idea of explicitly looking at environmental, social and governance issues as a holy trinity of …
Impact Management | October 6, 2022
VCs ♥️ ESG
ImpactAlpha, Oct. 6 – Red state politicians are fanning the flames of an anti-ESG backlash. Venture capitalists are embracing environmental, social and governance …
Personal Finance | October 5, 2022
Five steps to greening your 401(k) – and why it’s harder than it should be
Seems like it shouldn’t be that hard: Build a portfolio from the better sustainable funds. Add them to your company’s 401(k) fund lineup. …
ESG | October 4, 2022
SOCAP Spotlight: Using ESG for good, not for evil
ImpactAlpha, Oct. 4 – SOCAP is back in person this year and the conversation around ESG will be lively and urgent. I’m thrilled …
Impact Voices | September 26, 2022
How asset managers are digging in on diversity to stand out from their peers
ESG begins at home. As increasing numbers of investors are looking for environmental, social and governance investment opportunities, asset managers are directing more …
Capitalism Reimagined | September 20, 2022
Tanking one holding to boost returns and reduce risks across your portfolio
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 20 – Few big institutional investors would deliberately encourage their portfolio companies to make moves that hit their valuations. The Shareholder Commons, …
Photo by Jonathan Hung.
ESG | September 15, 2022
Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan-backed Ethic raises $50 million growth investment
ImpactAlpha, September 15 — New York-based Ethic has raised $50 million to expand into new markets and products. The tech-driven asset management platform …
Policy Corner | September 14, 2022
Reclaiming ESG as pro-business and pro-worker
The culture wars have come for sustainable investing. Right-wing politicians at both federal and state levels have started latching onto the well-known term …