During the quarter, and in the hottest year on record, the United Nations held its 28th annual Climate Change Conference in the unlikely oil producing nation of the United Arab Emirates.
Major insurance companies, including Allstate and State Farm, are pulling out of markets like California and Florida because of the increasingly frequent, destructive, and costly natural disasters that come with climate change.
A new report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors focuses on the challenges to the US Economy due to climate change and the likelihood that the federal government will be required to dramatically modify its spending priorities to avoid amplifying the problem going forward.
Impact investing got a shot in the arm this quarter with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on August 16.
Grantham makes the argument that the process of moving away from fossil fuels will itself be resource intensive and that the commodities needed are limited in supply.
President Biden has nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the Federal Reserve’s next vice chair for bank supervision, the most powerful banking regulatory role in the country.
After years of pressure from activist groups, Harvard University, with the largest education endowment in the US totaling $42 billion, announced it would no longer make any direct investments in companies that explore or develop fossil fuels.
In what some are calling the vote heard around the world, a small activist investor successfully voted out three of Exxon Mobil’s 12 board directors for failing to push the company hard enough on climate transition issues.
Shortly after rejoining the Paris Agreement via executive action earlier this year, President Biden announced a $2 trillion infrastructure plan.
A new initiative by The “Big Four” accounting firms – Price Waterhouse, KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte – seeks to identify a set of universal ESG metrics that can be reflected in mainstream annual reports and other corporate financial disclosures.
In late June, the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed a rule that would require retirement plan fiduciaries to prove that they are not sacrificing financial returns or increasing risk if they put money into Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG)-related investments. The move comes at a time when investor interest in the space is surging in reaction to wildfires in Australia, the Covid-19 pandemic, a heightened awareness of racial inequity and social justice issues, and an economic downturn that has disrupted labor markets and global supply chains.
The world of impact investing just got a lot more interesting as Blackrock, the largest money manager in the world with nearly $7 trillion under management, committed to the space in a big way. The company’s chairman Larry Fink said last week that he believes “we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance” due to climate-change-related issues and committed the firm to making sustainability the new standard in its investment offerings.
The insurance industry isn’t usually who we turn to for solutions to humanity’s most pressing issues. However, far downstream from the vanguard of individuals who have been investing in companies that are making positive changes to their environmental, social and governance footprint in the world (and, likewise, divesting from bad actors), is a movement among insurers who themselves face an existential threat from climate change.
For a number of reasons, not all companies at the top of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rankings are affecting as much positive impact in the world as one might expect, nor are all bottom-line focused companies bad actors with regards to their environmental, social or governance behaviors.
Divestment has been a long-standing approach to influencing companies to be more socially and environmentally responsible.
For the past forty years or so, CEOs in America have said they had a fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize profits.
Research has demonstrated the value of gender diversity in corporate leadership roles, namely as it relates to improved financial performance. Even though women comprise fifty percent of the global working-age population and have educational attainment comparable to men, they have significantly lower labor market participation rates than men.
For most of the history of impact investing, equities have dominated the conversation. There simply hasn’t been enough of a bond market driven by environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors
One serious issue that has plagued investing using environmental, social and governance (ESG) inputs is the lack of quality data and measurement tools. Investors naturally want sustainability performance data that
While it’s not fair to say that this is where it all began, it is hard to find a piece of research or marketing that doesn’t reference the UN’s Sustainable
A comprehensive review of more than 200 academic studies, industry reports and books on the subject of environmental, social and governance factors in investing shows specifically how corporate sustainability practices
AQR is generally known as a hard-nosed investment management firm largely focused on quantitative analysis and is best known as an early adopter of factor investing. So, it was a
Authors Whelan and Find dispel the notion that integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues into corporate business strategy costs more than it’s worth. Citing data and numerous case studies,
See also “Fiduciary Duty in the 21st Century” UNPRI Report. The CFA Institute has joined a growing chorus of voices calling for environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues to be