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Some Thoughts on the Future of Responsible Investment

For almost 50 years now, I have been active in the world of responsible investment (otherwise known as sustainable investment, ESG integration, and impact investment, among other things). Its growth, especially since 2010, has surprised me. Assets under management in this once obscure discipline are estimated at as much as $37.8 trillion by year-end 2021.[i] Around the world, the field is exploding with new products, a deluge of data and heightened recognition from regulators. I am particularly surprised at these developments given that since its earliest years, its practitioners have faced a barrage of criticism. The three prongs of these…

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Credit Markets – The Elephant in the ESG Room

To read the headlines, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that ESG integration in capital markets is now fully underway, as the value of global assets applying environmental, social and governance data to drive investment decisions has soared to $40.5 trillion and now represents more than a third of the $95 trillion equity market in 2020.

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Corporate structure is neither the problem nor the solution to increasing sustainability

Some people say the solution to the ESG challenge is to embed social-purpose statements into corporate charters, and that this will oblige companies to consider all stakeholders and to measure and report on their social effect. This sounds good – but as we engage business in trying to meet the sustainability challenge, is corporate structure the right place to focus?

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The Six New Rules of Business

A Review

“Tell me which of the pressing issues of our time keep you awake at night, and I will tell you how the old rules of profit maximization and short-term thinking contribute to those problems,” Judy Samuelson writes in the introduction to her new book, The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World. The rules are changing. The COVID-19 pandemic and other recent crises have made it clear that business and society are more intertwined than ever before, and the old notions of “what is good for business” are no longer sustainable for society – or…

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