Sunday Brunch
Our thoughts on the key issues faced by practitioners trying to advance sustainable investing.
Sunday Brunch: investing is not just about generating alpha
At it's heart our financial system is really simple. Money flows from savers to spenders. Where this system struggles is when the actions of the spenders impose costs on the wider society that mean that the net return to savers (financial return minus imposed costs) are reduced.
Sunday Brunch: it's a question of character(istics)
The world of investing and sustainability can challenge our traditional ways of looking at the world and characterising and grouping things. When my children were younger we were fortunate to live in the countryside. Our back garden was a mixture of traditional and 'the wild' - the latter
Sunday Brunch - who decides the topics for engagement?
Unless you have been living off grid, you will know that one of the defining debates around ESG and Sustainability relates to engagement - by which we mean interacting with companies to get them to change their behaviour.
Sunday Brunch - is DEI as important with the investor as with the investment?
We have discussed the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in a number of blogs previously. Have we been looking at DEI all wrong?Embracing diversity with an equitable mindset aimed at creating an inclusive workplace has been held up as a way of improving performance. But is that
Sunday Brunch: more on getting financial people to listen
Back at the end of May I wrote the first blog in a series on the topic of what gets financial peoples attention when we talk about Sustainable Finance. And yes, its mostly, but not exclusively, about money. My starting point is that we all want to deliver change and
Sunday Brunch: the values-behaviour gap
Understanding human behaviour is critical to all aspects of sustainable investing. If we don't know why people do things, we cannot get them to change. And if they are not going to change, we will need to rethink how we make company business model's sustainable and financially viable.
Sunday Brunch: DEI and the importance of the swim leg
We previously discussed some excellent research by Alex Edmans (London Business School), Caroline Flammer (Columbia University) and Simon Glossner (Federal Reserve Board) looking at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). They sought to identify what the determinants of a DEI environment in the workplace are and then looked at the consequences
Sunday Brunch: getting financial people to listen
Understand who your customer is, what they care about - that is the way to think about innovation - David Robertson, MIT Sloan This might seem a strange way to start a discussion about how sustainability professionals can get finance people to listen. But if you think about it, as