🎧 On this week’s podcast. From Austin, ImpactAlpha’s Dennis Price joins host Brian Walsh to discuss Texas’s surprising role as the U.S. leader in clean energy – and how the oil-pumping state might yet wrest defeat from the jaws of victory. Plus, the headlines.
Metrics Madness: Wealth, ownership and ‘quality adjusted life years’ (video). The search for a universal metric to guide investments in racial justice and equitable wealth-building was… aspirational. “We are still a little ways away from the winner, but we have found a pool of possible winners that could all make sense,” Southern Reconstruction Fund’s Napoleon Wallace said, summing up ImpactAlpha’s Agents of Impact Call No. 50 (see, “Chasing the holy grail of a universal metric for racial equity and wealth-building”). The weight of sentiment landed on wealth, and specifically the increase in wealth as measured by assets for BIPOC clients. The metric was proposed by Caitlin Rosser of Calvert Impact, which is using the metric in its new Mission Driven Bank Fund. “That is going to be our North Star,” she said. “Increase in assets, increase in wealth.”
Deal spotlight: Climate tech in Europe. Climate tech is the fastest-growing venture capital sector in Europe. Of the $70.1 billion in funding deployed to global climate tech ventures last year, close to $18 billion went to startups in Europe, according to analytics firm HolonIQ. Climate tech ventures in Europe raised only a half-billion dollars in 2017. The European Commission last month set out its Green Deal Industrial Plan, an answer to the Biden administration’s industrial policy that is supercharging clean tech investment in the U.S. This week, Copenhagen-based Agreena raised €46 million ($50 million) to help farmers in Europe transition to more regenerative practices and generate revenues from soil carbon credits. Separately, Finland’s Carbonaide secured €1.8 million to ramp up production of its carbon-negative concrete. Off the mainland, U.K.-based Mixergy landed £9.2 million ($11.4 million) for its energy-efficient and renewables-compatible hot water tanks.
LeapFrog Investments named Rob Leary, ex- of Nuveen and Olayan Group, as senior advisor to Leapfrog’s leadership team… Alex Bell, formerly with Tikehau Capital, became a partner at J.P. Morgan Private Capital to focus on sustainable growth equity… Jen Sullo, former global head of sustainable investing solutions at Goldman Sachs, joined Earth Finance as managing director of asset management and investing solutions.
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ImpactAlpha, Mar. 31 – The search for a universal metric to guide investments in racial justice and equitable wealth-building was…aspirational. “We are still a …
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 9 – The fatal beating by police of Tyre Nichols in Memphis last month exposed risks to the city’s finances that have …
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 18 – Cities around the U.S. are raising low-cost capital in the municipal bond markets by highlighting intentional efforts to address long-standing …
ImpactAlpha, September 30 – Capital to support women’s economic growth and financial inclusion is flowing – finally! – in many advanced economies. In emerging …
ImpactAlpha, Sept. 19 – Investors, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and world leaders have descended on New York for Climate Week, the annual gathering alongside the …
ImpactAlpha, June 27 – ImpactAlpha’s spring season of Agents of Impact Calls spanned a period of tumult in the financial markets: instability in …
ImpactAlpha, June 3 – Just as investment in financial inclusion in Africa was really ramping up, a market downturn threatens to slow progress. Or …
ImpactAlpha, May 13 – One defining outcome of the pandemic: a boom in entrepreneurship. A record five million businesses were started in the …
ImpactAlpha, April 22 – The Ukraine crisis risks tipping up to 1.7 billion people — over one-fifth of humanity — into poverty, destitution …
ImpactAlpha, Apr. 1 – High-impact investments in fragile countries invariably entail political risk. And impact investments in a free press, humanitarian tech, financial inclusion …
ImpactAlpha, Mar. 11 – It’s one thing for a corporation to set environmental or social goals. It’s another to shift executives, employees and supply …
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 25 – Bottom-up policies for access to capital in divested communities. Top-down strategies to reshape capitalism to work for all stakeholders. “We …
From Austin, ImpactAlpha’s Dennis Price joins host Brian Walsh to discuss Texas’s surprising role as the U.S.’s leader in clean energy – and how …
Corporate, nonprofit and municipal issuers are designating bond proceeds to support organizations that increase access to finance for women and people of color. …
Host Monique Aiken has the headlines and Atlas Impact Partners’ Robert Brown and ImpactAlpha contributing editor Imogen Rose-Smith join David Bank to parse …
What is the net worth of Salt Lake City? It’s a relatively straightforward exercise to total up the balance sheet of a company …
Impact Engine’s Priya Parrish joins David Bank to explain why purpose built investment firms end up with better impact outcomes than purpose driven …
2x Global’s Sana Kapadia joins host Monique Aiken to ring in Women’s History Month and talk about the state of gender-lens investing. Plus, …
The roundtable – that’s Brian Walsh, Imogen Rose-Smith and David Bank – is back together to discuss private equity and, specifically, that $4.5 …
It’s called the Silver Tsunami. In the United States, baby boomers own half of the privately held businesses with employees. And those boomers …
Fran Seegull of the Impact Investing Alliance joins host David Bank (filling in for Brian Walsh) to talk about jobs, climate and communities …
ImpactAlpha’s David Bank joins Host Monique Aiken to to share some takeaways from this week’s Agents of Impact Call on the steps that …
Development finance institutions are essential to the mobilization of capital to slow climate change and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. So why …
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 20 – Building wealth for women and people of color is about numbers as well as equity. By mid-century, there will be …
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank sent depositors fleeing into the arms of large “Systemically Important Banks,” even after the …
Impact fund managers are increasingly expected to provide their investors (i.e., institutional investors and allocators) with reporting that offers visibility into their portfolio’s …
When Fred van Eck, a New York investment manager, purchased 9,400 acres of Northern California and Oregon forest for timber production in the …
What’s not to love about planting trees? Once considered a tried and true solution to the climate crisis, tree-growing has lately been given …
Editor’s note: This blog is part of ImpactAlpha’s series, “Sustaining Impact,” authored by participants in the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) Sustaining Learning Labs. Key insights …
For all the optimism contained in International Women’s Day, the reality is that in most places around the world, the gender gap isn’t …
If ESG is a foot in the door to an economy built around sustainability, inclusion and equity, then governance is the power that’s …
The pandemic heightened awareness of the foundational role that caregiving plays in the US economy. Yet care infrastructure for childcare, eldercare, and other …
Often within the impact investing landscape, “impact” is defined by who we invest in and what we invest in. To truly create systems …
One year ago, the unthinkable happened: history, whose end had been (perhaps academically) proclaimed after the fall of the Soviet Union, came roaring …
Over my 20-plus years as a professional working on economic development, development finance, and impact investing, as both an investor and an advisor, …
Editor’s note: This blog is part of ImpactAlpha’s series, “Sustaining Impact,” authored by participants in the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) Sustaining Learning Labs. Key insights …
ImpactAlpha, March 24 – Hundreds of companies and investors this week urged policymakers to protect their “freedom to invest responsibly,” marking a new …
What is the net worth of Salt Lake City? It’s a relatively straightforward exercise to total up the balance sheet of a company …
ImpactAlpha, March 10 – Laura Ortiz Montemayor is not on board with decarbonization or its advocates. “Carbon is key to life. It’s a …
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 17 – Years before this week’s elegant and understated Super Bowl appearance, Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty turned down the NFL’s invitation to headline …
ImpactAlpha, February 3 — Andrew Crosson was a decade deep in the work of community economic development in central Appalachia when he got …
ImpactAlpha, January 27 – Gary Forster left his job in logistics at Procter & Gamble to volunteer in Zambia, inspired by the 2005 …
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 20 – Building wealth for women and people of color is about numbers as well as equity. By mid-century, there will be …
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 13 – A small-business lender in the Mississippi delta. A microfinance bank in Uganda. A global development finance institution in London. Laurie …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 16 – Napoleon Wallace’s presence was all over the recent Mission Investors Exchange conference in Baltimore. …As the co-founder of Activest, which …
“I love complexity,” says Berlow, founder of Vibrant Data Labs, a “social impact data science” group. An ecologist and data nerd, Berlow spent …
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 2 – Back in 1931, Winston Churchill predicted we’d grow real meat without the animals. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug …
ImpactAlpha, Nov. 4 – Barbados is an island nation of just 166 square miles and less than 300,000 inhabitants. But its leader, Mia …
Virtual reality “for good” has been having its moment ever since several 360-degree films stirred empathy for Syrian refugees. The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC launched a $10 million impact fund to invest in virtual reality startups with storytelling projects around the Global Goals for sustainable development.
Photo credit: Dan Mason / Flickr
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