ESG
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 …
Muni Impact | September 14, 2022
To manage climate risk, municipal bond insurer taps data on community vulnerability
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 14 – Public finance investors buy hundreds of billions of dollars in municipal bond issuances each year, providing much needed capital for …
Personal Finance | September 8, 2022
Young savers, if not Republican governors, want their banks out of fossil fuels
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 8 – Politicians that seek to ban ESG investing are up against some serious headwinds from the next generation. “Banking with …
ESG | September 7, 2022
Dow Jones raises stakes in ESG data competition with news-driven ratings
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 7 – The opinion page of The Wall Street Journal has proudly championed the campaign to discredit environmental, social and governance, or …
ESG | September 5, 2022
Infowars investing invades “anti-competitive” Texas
Something’s rotten in the State of Texas. Once self-styled as a bastion of free markets and friendly regulation, a down-ballot politician now wields …
Institutional Impact | September 1, 2022
My summer fun: Parsing the proposals to regulate ESG
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 …
Impact Voices | August 25, 2022
Tips for strengthening ESG investing from emerging market fund managers
ImpactAlpha, August 25 – Environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investing is dogged by inconsistent, and sometimes conflicting, reporting criteria and ratings that make …
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
ESG | August 24, 2022
Riskwashing: How the crusade against ESG is hurting businesses, taxpayers and retirees
ImpactAlpha, Aug. 24 – Firms engage in ‘greenwashing’ when they deceive customers or investors about their environmental practices and their impact. Now come politicians …
Vivek Ramaswamy (photo: Wikipedia)
ESG | August 16, 2022
With his anti-ESG fund, Vivek Ramaswamy takes a page from the Infowars playbook
Alex Jones is getting his overdue comeuppance, but this godfather of conspiracy theories has spawned a new generation of acolytes with marginally more …
Institutional Impact | July 13, 2022
ESG and its discontents: A defense of HSBC banker Stuart Kirk and a critique of ESG orthodoxy
Stuart Kirk has had enough. Last week, Kirk resigned as HSBC’s head of sustainability, saying his position had become unsustainable. The news wasn’t …
Policy Corner | July 7, 2022
The S.E.C.’s new rules (Part Two): Five features of the ESG proposal that warrant attention from investors
I recently wrote about the transformational pair of proposed rules from the SEC that would, at long last, lend clarity and comparability to …
Policy Corner | July 6, 2022
The S.E.C.’s new rules (Part One): An opportunity to rein in greenwashing in asset management
Fossil fuel industry-supported activist groups and politicians have launched a campaign to discredit ESG investing as “woke capitalism.” This new push appears to …
Brussels
Refugee Lens Investing | June 21, 2022
Tracking corporate action to address the climate-driven refugee crisis
Every three seconds another person is forced out of the rhythms of normal life and into crossing a border to find safety. From …
Frontiers in Social Innovation | June 15, 2022
Three practices to help make ESG metrics as reliable as financial metrics
This post is part of ImpactAlpha’s “Frontiers in Social Innovation” series with Stanford GSB Center for Social Innovation. The posts in the series …
ESG | June 14, 2022
“Greenwashers” on notice as global crackdown on ESG mislabeling continues
ImpactAlpha, Jun. 14 – Another day, another bank under investigation over misleading ESG claims. Goldman Sachs is the latest financial institution to come under …
Capitalism Reimagined | May 31, 2022
Can investors respond to the systemic risks gun violence poses to the American economy?
ImpactAlpha, May 31 – Investors may not be primarily responsible for finding ways to reduce the risk of mass shootings. That would be our …
Impact Voices | May 31, 2022
Three ways to reboot ESG for social value
ESG investing – short for Environment, Social and Governance – now accounts for about $15 trillion of assets under management in the USA, …
SEC Chair Gary Gensler | Photo credit: Getty Images
Policy Corner | May 26, 2022
S.E.C. rules would require funds to back up their ESG claims
ImpactAlpha, May 26 – The $1.5 million fine levied on BNY Mellon this week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading ESG …
New York Stock Exchange | Photo credit: Javen
Corporate Impact | May 24, 2022
Shareholders test their power with votes at Exxon, Chevron, BlackRock and McD’s
ImpactAlpha, May 24 – It’s spring, and your fancy may lightly turn to thoughts of love – or summer vacation. Shareholder activists are focused …
Impact Voices | May 18, 2022
A former Exxon executive poses four climate questions oil companies must answer for shareholders to invest responsibly
ImpactAlpha, May 18 – As oil and gas companies enter the annual shareholder meeting season, they face a concerned, perhaps skeptical, investment community. Their …
Former vice president Mike Pence | Photo credit: Gino Santa Maria
Capitalism Reimagined | May 12, 2022
ESG opponents get political under the guise of getting politics out of investing
ImpactAlpha, May 12 – The war in Ukraine and high gas prices gave oil and gas interests an opening to push back against efforts …
(left to right) Eugene Cornelius (Milken Institute), Kweilin Ellingrud (McKinsey) and Kimberley Reid (Future Fund Management Agency) at Milken Global Conference 2022 | Photo credit: Milken Institute
Capitalism Reimagined | May 5, 2022
Overheard at the Milken Global Conference: Mission and margins
How to understand and harness the recent influx of capital into ESG products was the conversation at the center of this week’s 25th …
Impact Voices | May 5, 2022
Reports of the death of responsible investment are greatly exaggerated
Face it: responsible investment is about political choices. Short of this reckoning, the fate of ESG might be the least of our concerns. …
Policy Corner | April 25, 2022
Expanding the ‘S’ in ESG to account for the full scope of corporate impact on workers and communities
ImpactAlpha, April 25 – From the Great Resignation to the historic worker-organized unionization of an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y., worker empowerment …
Erie, Pennsylvania
Policy Corner | April 13, 2022
Keeping an eye on policymaking for impact investing
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 13 – From Opportunity Zones reform to SEC nominees, it’s been a busy few days on Capitol Hill for policy affecting impact …
Labor unions demonstrations in Jakarta, Indonesia | Photo credit: Adam Erlangga
Impact Management | April 12, 2022
If you like the alpha in ‘E,’ you’ll love the S-factor
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 12 – Perhaps it’s the urgency of the climate crisis. Or the relative simplicity of counting tons of carbon or gallons of …