Ethic raises $29 million to grow customized sustainable portfolios for wealth advisors

ImpactAlpha Editor

Dennis Price

ImpactAlpha, Mar. 31 – Ethic has raised $29 million to grow its customized sustainable portfolios for wealth advisors. The tech-driven asset management platform says it has grown assets under management ten-fold since its 2019 financing round, including to $760 million in sustainable direct indexing strategies. “It’s increasingly clear that the future of asset management is personalized,” said Dan Petrozzo of Oak HC/FT, which led the new financing.

Existing investors including Fidelity Investments, Nyca Partners, Sound Ventures, ThirdStream Partners, Urban Innovation Fund and Kapor Capital also participated. Ethic has a strategic agreement with Fidelity and has partnered with several large U.S. advisory firms.

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ImpactAlpha Editor

Dennis Price

January 27, 2023

The Brief

The Week’s Impact Briefing

🎧 On this week’s podcast: Development finance institutions are essential to the mobilization of capital to slow climate change and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. So why do these quasi-public institutions share so little data about their activities? ImpactAlpha’s Jessica Pothering breaks it down for host Brian Walsh. Plus, the headlines.

The Week’s Agent of Impact

🔍 Gary Forster, Publish What You Fund: Holding development finance institutions accountable for impact. Gary Forster left his job in logistics at Procter & Gamble to volunteer in Zambia, inspired by the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign to pressure the U.K. government to prioritize global poverty alleviation. Over the next decade, he took on humanitarian assignments in more than 25 countries. Much of the work – like taxi ambulances in Nigeria and bicycle ambulances in Zambia – was health-focused (and involved a fair bit of logistics). “I’ve seen these projects and these investments from the recipient-country perspective and have seen first-hand the impact that this kind of support can have on people’s lives,” Forster tells ImpactAlpha. His field experience helps him stay connected to the overarching purpose of aid and development finance in the work he does now as CEO of Publish What You Fund, a nonprofit organization that calls itself “the global campaign for aid and development transparency.”

The Week’s Dealflow

💸 Deal spotlight: Black-worker ownership. With more than half of business owners in the U.S. over 55 years old, there’s a “silver tsunami” of businesses for sale. Most of them don’t have a succession plan. An increasingly viable option: Transfer ownership to employees. Bethesda, Md.-based Apis & Heritage Capital Partners this week closed a $58.1 million fund to help small and mid-sized businesses with large workforces of color transition to employee ownership (see, “Black and brown employee ownership for the post-COVID economy“). Nearly 20 million Black workers make up roughly 12% of the American workforce. Black business ownership can help bridge the racial wealth gap and advance economic mobility. Black Americans aged 62 to 70 have a median net worth of $46,200 compared to $331,700 for white Americans, says the Center for Global Policy Solutions. Apis & Heritage says worker-owners in its portfolio can accrue $70,000 to $120,000 in retirement savings.

The Week’s Talent

Christine Chow, ex- of HSBC Asset Management, joined Credit Suisse Asset Management as managing director and head of active ownership… Carbon America named Cruz Gamboa, ex- of General Electric, chief commercial and financial officer, and Craig Spreadbury, ex- of Four Corners Petroleum, as chief operating officer… Sarah Gordon, founding CEO of the U.K.’s Impact Investing Institute, will step down to join the London School of Economics as a visiting professor.