The OECD published its Green Growth Indicators 2017 report on June 20. The report uses a uses a range of indicators covering everything from land use to CO2 productivity and innovation to show where 46 countries rank on balancing economic growth with environmental pressures over 1990...
The Central Bank of China announced on June 16 measures to support the establishment of five green finance pilot zones. The aim of the pilot zones is to boost the development of green finance products including interest discount and tax incentives from central and local...
In its Quarterly Bulletin 2017 Q2 published June 16, The Bank of England announced they will initiate a review of climate-related risks in the UK banking sector. The work will be carried out in a similar way to the assessment of insurance companies it launched...
Bio Base: London, UK Position: Director of Financial Sector and Investor Engagement, Big Society Capital (BSC) Tenure in current role: 3.5 years By: Clare McCartney Evita, please tell us a bit about your background. My background has mainly been in financial services, although my first job straight out of university...
The mid-term review of EU’s Capital Markets Union Initiative was published on June 8th. The report contains a section dedicated to green and sustainable finance, marking another step towards mainstreaming green finance in Europe as reported by EURACTIV’s Frédéric Simon. Once regarded as “exotic”, sustainable...
A summary of the story evolving so far… In the wake of U.S President Donald Trump announcing the intention for the US to withdraw from the 2015 Paris accord June 1st Jess Shankleman on Bloomberg, provides a useful Q&A of what comes of the accord without...
A report was released on May 30 by the Green Digital Finance Alliance, founded by UN Environment and Ant Financial. The report gave an update on Ant Financial Services Group, in association with UN Environment large-scale pilot in greening citizens’ consumption behavior through the use of mobile payment platforms, big...
The seventh NatWest SE100 Data Report, launched in London last week. This is the largest survey of the UK social enterprise sector’s turnover, growth, profitability, and employment. It compiles data from 2,120 social enterprises with a total turnover of £8.5bn. The report indicated that in spite...
On May 24th 2017, Andrew Whiley from The Climate Bonds Initiative published an analysis on the EUR 500m green bond issued by Repsol SA, this being the first green bond issued by an oil company to date. According to Whiley, using the “brown” balance sheets of...
The GIIN published its Annual Impact Investor Survey this week. The Survey analyses the activities of over 200 of the world’s leading impact investing organisations, covering the entire universe: fund managers, foundations, banks, development finance institutions, family offices, pension funds and insurers. The Survey’s 208 respondents...
WHEB, a London-based asset manager published an impact report last week measuring the social and environmental impacts of its Sustainability Fund. The sustainability specialist is one of the first investors to report using the recommendations from the G20’s Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD),...
In American Banker, John K.S. Wilson writes about the threat to shareholder resolutions posed by Republican attempts to dismantle Dodd-Frank and replace it with the Financial Choice Act. According to Wilson, Shareholder proposals allow investors to put questions related to a company’s environmental, social and...
Together with Sumerian Partners, a manager of philanthropic capital for foundations, Oxfam recently released the report Impact Investment: Who are we helping? The report questions some of the common assumptions around impact investment, arguing that most articles on the topic focus on the needs and...
Meaghan Kilroy at Pensions & Investments reported last week from the Big Path Capital's Impact Capitalism Summit in the US. The panelist argued that one of the challenges of adding public investments to an impact portfolio is the difficulty of measuring the generated social or...
Axa, one of the biggest European insurers recently announced they are ending insurance support to coal-intensive businesses, i.e. those with more than half of their turnover coming from mining or coal burning operations, Megan Darby at Climate Home reports. The move will align Axa Insurance with...
Last week, London Business School hosted the Net Impact Conference 2017: Return on Impact. Interest in environmentally and socially responsible investment has grown by 33% since 2014 - today constituting almost $9 trillion in actively managed assets globally according to some measures. Increasingly, investors are asking: how...
Triodos, a leading sustainable bank in Europe opened registrations for its first ever UK personal current account this week. The account, described as the most sustainable current account ever brought to the UK market, will begin with a phased rollout this summer. Triodos has been operating...
Tensions between rich and poor countries were running high at a recent meeting of the Green Climate Fund board, the UN's flagship climate finance initiative Megan Darby at Climate Home reports. Projects worth a total of $755m were approved by the Fund's board, including $265m for renewable...
In an essay Darren Walker, the President of the Ford Foundation, explains the Foundation's decision to gradually invest up to $1 billion of its endowment in MRI funds (Mission-Related Investments), to be phased in over the next 10 years. According to Walker, the Ford Foundation is...
Following the Bloomberg/Carney task force recommendations that companies should include climate data in their mainstream financial reporting, an EY survey reveals that the majority of investors value ESG and non-financial reporting by investee companies. The survey – Is your non-financial performance revealing the true value of...
Financial Times features an article this week by Dan McCrum on investment in the climate change era, which looks at the ways investors take climate into account when deciding what to buy and sell. Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist at the asset manager GMO argues...
A new report released today by CDP, a provider of corporate climate data, analysing an over €250 billion market cap grouping of European utilities reveals that the industry is locked into high emissions from long-lived fossil fuel power plants until 2050. Further, at a carbon price...
Bio Name: Praveen Joseph Based: London, UK Position: Principal Trader & Portfolio Manager - High grade fixed income, EBRD By: Maayan Keren Zur Praveen, please tell us a bit about your background. I grew up in India and pursued my bachelor’s in engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Madras....
John Waggoner at Investment News writes about the outlook for the impact investment sector under a Trump presidency. According to Waggoner, the best case scenario is that the momentum behind the sector continues and that impact investment will eventually form a part of all investment...
Bio Name: Lizzie Cadbury Base: London, UK Position: Forensic (Investigations and Compliance), KPMG Tenure: 11 years Global issue you care most about: Vulnerable children Lizzie, a Chartered Accountant, is a Manager in KPMG’s Forensic team. She talked to us about a secondment completed in Southern Africa, where she used her financial...
The world's first green bond index-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) launched on the Euronext Paris last week, Hamza Ali at Environmental Finance reports. Launched by the ETF provider Luxor Asset Management, it is the first ETF to be based on labelled green bonds. Francois Millet, Head of...
Big Society Capital (BSC) recently commissioned polling with ComRes to better understand the views and needs of employees with DC pensions in the UK. BSC argues that the while the DC pensions revolution has been a great success, there is danger that we will fail...
Megan Darby at Climate Home writes this week about EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini's response to the US call for increased defence spending by NATO members. Defence chief James Mattis and VP Mike Pence were at the Munich Security Conference where Mogherini offered to...
A new report finds that the risks arising from climate change impact more industries than any other environmental, social and governance (ESG) issue in a typical UK pension scheme's defined-contribution (DC) default fund portfolio. The report, commissioned by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) and...
![Michael Harris Head & Shoulders[1586] (2)](https://financematters.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Michael-Harris-Head-Shoulders1586-2.jpg)
Bio Name: Michael Harris Base: London, UK Position: Manager, PwC and co-founder of BeyondMe Tenure: 6 years Global issue you care most about: Mental health Michael Harris is a chartered accountant with PwC and the co-founder of BeyondMe, an organisation which pairs professionals wanting to volunteer their time and skills with charity...
The Climate Bonds Initiative recently published an analysis of 2016 policy highlights from around the globe on green bonds. It finds that 2016 was a watershed moment as the Paris agreement entered in to force and pushed governments to outline plans to achieve their pledged...
Climate change and the business risks it poses are becoming a key corporate sustainability reporting trend, according to a report from the Global Reporting Initiative and advisory firm SustainAbility, Jessica Lyons Hardcastle at Environmental Leader reports this week. The report, which consolidates insights from the GRI...
By Maayan Keren-Zur Enrico, tell us a bit about your background and what motivated you to pursue something different, impactful as it were? I discovered the impact investing space during my first Master degree in International Policy at the Catholic University in Milan. I read about it...
Dave Trow, Assistant Manager at KPMG, entered and won one of the firm’s corporate responsibility competitions, ‘BRIGHT’. The programme is focused on developing new ideas specifically targeted at addressing the UN millennium development goals. He active in KPMG's volunteering programmes and at the same time...
A task force established in 2013 under the UK’s presidency of the G8, defined social impact investment as "investment that intentionally targets specific social objectives along with a financial return, and measures the achievement of both." In a publication in March 2016, Minister for Civil Society Rob...
Ireland could become the first country in the world to entirely divest its sovereign wealth fund from coal, oil and gas, Climate Home reports. Lawmakers were overwhelmingly split in favour of the €8 billion Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to exit holdings in coal, oil and gas...
Bio Name: Ilan Ganot Base: Cambridge, Massachusetts Position: Founder and CEO, Solid Biosciences Tenure: 3 years Global issue you care most about: Muscular dystrophy Ilan left his life a hedge fund banker at JPMorgan in London to create a new business aimed at developing drugs for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His son's...
Besides the heartwarming scenes from Women's Marches around the globe yesterday, there are other reasons to feel hopeful about the state of the planet: Chris Goodall argues in the Guardian Sustainable Business that we now have the technology to make a complete transition from carbon to...
A report released today by Boston Common Asset Management looks at how 28 of the world's largest banks are managing climate-related risks. It finds that while many banks are now conducting carbon footprinting and environmental stress-tests, they largely fail to use their own climate data...
Bio Name: Ronald Choi Base: Tokyo, Japan Position: Executive Director, JPMorgan Tenure: 7 years Global issue you care most about: Disaster relief Ronald has been donating both his time and project-execution skills to multiple JPM-sponsored schemes for rebuilding infrastructure and facilities in Japan for communities that were impacted by the Fukushima...
More than 600 leading businesses and financial institutions have signed an open letter to urge president-elect Donald Trump to take action on climate change. The release of the letter coincides with the start of the Senate hearings to confirm his cabinet nominees, many of whom...
Let's start the new year with some good news: The UK generated more electricity from wind than from coal power plants for the first time in 2016, according to energy analysts. Electricity generated from coal accounted for 9.2 per cent of the total energy market last...
A new report from the Resolution Foundation finds that the gender pay gap for millennials in their 20s has shrunk to just 5 per cent, according to Blue & Green Tomorrow. However, any progress is threatened by signs which indicate that as women reach their...
On Wednesday, the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) published its recommendations, urging companies to disclose the financial effects of climate change. Headed by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the task force was set up...
FTSE Russell celebrates the 15th anniversary this week of its flagship ESG Index Series, the FTSE4Good. Launched in 2001, the index series aims to provide investors with a transparent and objective benchmark related to social and environmental sustainability. The index includes companies that are regularly...
Finance Matters attended the GIIN Investor Forum in Amsterdam this week. The forum brought together over 800 participants from 45 countries and 6 continents from various areas across impact investment: asset managers and owners, social enterprises, civil society and academia - to discuss the most...
In 2013, 11 Danish pension funds pulled out of the Principles for Responsible Investment, citing concerns over its governance. Four of the pension funds have now confirmed that they will be rejoining the PRI, saying that the organisation has "listened to the criticism that lead to...
Some good climate news in the December darkness: The European Commission is warning member states that 'secret' subsidies for fossil fuels will not be tolerated under EU state aid rules, Megan Darby at Climate Home reports. Eleven member states already have or are planning to...
New research reveals that the majority of new local plans in England are failing to cut carbon emissions and plan for the type of severe weather due to get more frequent over the next decade, Blue & Green Tomorrow reports today. The study was carried...
Daniel Brooksbank at Responsible Investor reports on the new revised European pension fund directive that was approved in Strasbourg on Thursday. The updated Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provisions directive (known as IORP2) covers the €3.2 trillion European occupational pensions market. The directive contains new requirements...
A new report by the CDP which analyses a US$1.2tn grouping of the world’s major publicly-listed international oil and gas companies reveals a transatlantic divide as European companies outperform their US peers in preparedness for a low-carbon future by beginning to invest in alternative energy...
The Climate Bonds Initiative has released its COP22 Green Bond Directions paper, outlining growing awareness green bonds as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) financing tools. The paper highlights the substantial growth of the green bond market in 2016, to fund both climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Issuance...
Environmental Finance, Business Green and The Guardian all feature articles this week on a new report by the CDP, which looks at how some of the world's largest listed companies are managing water risk. The CDP approached 1,200 of the worlds largest PLCs for the...
Much of the world's climate activists and the responsible investment community are understandably concerned about what a Trump win will mean for the momentum on climate change: The president-elect has called climate change Chinese hoax to make American manufacturing less competitive, has promised to rip...
Many pundits, journalists and politicians on both sides of the pond have argued that Donald Trump's win was a rejection by the disenfranchised masses of an elitist establishment that has long ignored the concerns of working people. While we agree that this election has raised...
Forbes has an article this week on why millennials care more than previous generations about social impact investment. Sarah Landrum writes that the label of millennials being apathetic placed on them by elder generations is false. On the contrary, most millennials are hard workers, and...
Lee Mannion at the Pioneers Post reports this week from Big Society Capital's (BSC) inaugural "Town Hall" event on 2 November. The event is the chief executive Cliff Prior's first public grilling since taking up the roll earlier this year. The "Town Hall" is intended as...
New research coming out of Good Money Week, a national week to promote responsible investment, shows that the UK public would like ethical investment to be made easier. 63% support the introduction of a 'kitemark' style label to help costumers identify sustainable financial products - similar...
A new energy transition law in France requires investors to disclose their contribution towards meeting climate targets. Article 173 of the new law is a significant comply-or-explain green finance mechanism, reports Responsible Investor, that requires investors to report on how they map the green house...
Members of the world’s impact investing ecosystem are convening in Amsterdam on the 7-8 December at the GIIN Investor Forum 2016. This is the pinnacle of the world's impact investing calendar, designed to drive conversation, partnerships and investment. Join the biggest names in the industry to...
Good news for the renewables sector: A leading research institute in South Africa finds that wind and solar power is 40% cheaper than output from new coal plants in the country, Megan Darby at Climate Home reports this week. The costs of renewables have dived over...
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the European Investment Bank has launched the Luxembourg-EID Climate Finance Platform, Blue & Green Tomorrow reports this week. The intention of the platform is to mobilise investments with a strong impact in addressing climate change, and will play a...
In an article on Responsible Investor this week, Sophie Robinson-Tillett discusses the OECD's recent call on policymakers to 'revitalise' the global securitisation market in order to achieve green investment targets. A new report by the organisation, Analysing Potential Bond Contributions in a Low-Carbon Transition argues that...
The Paris Agreement has officially passed the two thresholds required for it to come into force this week. As Sophie Yeo at CarbonBrief explains, at least 55 countries covering at least 55% of global emissions had to ratify the deal for its provisions to become legally...
A new report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), analyzing 14 of the world's largest steel companies, has found that the industry needs to reduce its carbon emissions by over 70% by 2015 in order to meet targets set out in the Paris Agreement. However,...
Social Finance recently released a publication written in partnership with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation: Evaluating Impact Bonds - Balancing Evidence and Risk. It explores the concept of evaluation in relation to Impact Bonds. The publication outlines three levels of evaluation that may take place within...
A group of 40 institutional investors which includes Swedish state pension funds, Aviva Investors, Nordea, Boston Common and Coller Capital has launched an engagement with multinational food companies to highlight the material risks posed by global industrial animal production. The investors are urging companies such...
Amit Bouri, the CEO of the Global Impact Investing Network (the GIIN), is calling on the world's investors to dedicate more of their capital to impact investments, in an op-ed in Institutional Investor. He argues that more investors need to join in the struggle if...
Experts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) say investments in fossil fuels such as oil and gas fell by 25% in 2015, Climate Change News reports this week. The decline in investments are partly due to lower oil prices, while improved efficiency and lower capital costs...
Blue & Green tomorrow has an article this week on the report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which finds that renewable power generation costs are now lower on average globally than fossil fuels and clean energy plants. Renewable power is on course to become even more...
Climate Change News has an article this week on the failure of some of the world's leading funds to live up to their responsible investment rhetoric. The Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP) has revealed that some of ExxonMobil's biggest investors are blocking action by the...
For someone seeking a crash course in impact investing, as well readers more familiar with the topic, the Financial Time's Guide To Impact Investing is an interesting read. The guide, published this week, covers the origins and development of impact investment in the US and...
Big Society Capital recently published their deal level data up to June 2016. The data includes BCS's deals as well as social investment deals made by other investors and arranged by intermediares which did not receive their investment. In an article on the release, Pioneers Post...
The European Energy Exchange announced on Wednesday that they will be launching trading of Wind Power Futures next month, according to S&P Platts. Trading participants will be able to hedge against volume risks in the generation of wind power within the German and Austrian market. This...
For those interested in the green bond market, The Climate Bond Initiative's report 'Bonds & Climate Change: State of the Market 2016' should be an interesting read. Commissioned by HSBC, it provides an in-depth analysis of the climate-aligned and labelled green bond markets. Key findings...
The Guardian has an interesting article this week on investments in off-grid renewables in the developing world. At the climate talks in Paris this past December, the topic of how to finance developing countries in order to assist in the transition to clean energy was...
The housing crisis in the UK featured frequently in the public debate leading up to the EU referendum, and many thought the bubble would burst after June's decision to Brexit. Blue and Green tomorrow has an article this week discussing the potential - or lack...
In an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Michele Jolin argues that in order to rebuild Americans' faith in their government, policy-makers should focus on finding and funding solutions to social problems that are backed by evidence and data. Currently, a large majority (61%...
Big Society Capital recently published its first independent stakeholder survey. The survey was commissioned by the organisation to gain a better understanding of how its work supporting social sector organisations to access affordable finance is viewed by charities, social enterprises and investors and other stakeholders....
Bloomberg has an article on the decision by a federal appeals court in Chicago this week to uphold the regulatory practice that enables the US government to account for projected costs of climate change. According to Bloomberg, the decision comes less than a week after...
In the fourth installment of their The Black Cab Interviews series, the Pioneers Post has taken Sir Ronald Cohen on a ride around London. Sir Cohen is the founder of one of the first venture capital firms, Apax Partners, as well as the co-founder and...
The Economist has an article on corporate sustainability, and the reasons behind its bad reputation. As there are currently no established standard practices, firms have many opportunities to cut corners. The article takes reducing pollution as an example: one way to give the appearance rather...
According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, 2016 has seen a 70 % rise in cities measuring and disclosing environmental data, in order to manage emissions and the increasing impacts of climate change. An unprecedented 533 cities in the world, representing 621 million citizens, have reported...
Nesta released a publication this week mapping the creative industry in the UK. The goal of the publication is to provide the data to demonstrate the economic significance of the creative industries - as well as inform policy-making to strengthen them further. The report finds...
The Pioneers Post has a new article discussing the report for RBS by social investment and social enterprise commentators Dan Gregory and David Floyd; "Forest for the Trees - UK banks investment in a social purpose" that came out last week. The report finds that, despite...
In a blog post on Climate Bonds, Sean Kidney discusses China's recent issuance of green bonds, as well as other news related to the green bond market. Because of the significant environmental challenges facing the country, local market definitions of 'green' differ somewhat from internally...
Sherryl Kuhlman, managing director of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, recently spoke with Julia Balandina Jaquier - a veteran impact investor and author of the book Catalyzing Wealth for Change: Guide to Impact Investing. The book offers perspective on how to tackle social responsibility endeavors....
The European offshore wind power industry is at a crossroads, according to Matt Timms in an article in EuropeanCEO this week. As costs have fallen and production increased steadily every year, the industry is rapidly expanding. Much of this expansion however, is due to government...
Coming on the back of recent years' severe levels of pollution in many major Chinese cities, the Bank of China has issued $3.03bn in new green bonds. It's the largest international issuance of its kind, and the country's environmental woes has helped drive global sales...
In an article in Environmental Finance this week, B. Holt Trasher argues that the next 20 years could see a boom in the forestry sector which increases profitability at the same time as reducing CO2 emissions. According to the author, there's growing recognition of the vital...
The Harvard Business Review features an article this week about the emergence of a new organizational form: the Certified B Corporation. According to the authors, the landscape of American corporations is changing. Corporate governance practices with a narrow focus on maximizing shareholder value are shifting, with...
A new report launched today by the We Mean Business Coalition, along with CDP, shows how significant the business contribution could be to ensure that the goals set out in the Paris Agreement this past December are met. The report, called The Business End of...
The UK's shocking decision to leave the EU will hurt investor sentiment in clean energy projects in the EU as well as the UK, it was claimed today according to Environmental Finance. The vote will bring years of uncertainty to the UK as it looks...
A new research report commissioned by WWF and published the night before the Annual General Meeting of the Green Bond Principles, shows that the proliferation of standards, frameworks and guidelines, as well as the diversity of market practices in terms of definitions and requirements for...
This is the first of installment of our interview series with professionals in the social impact field; we have interviewed Candice Motran, Investment Director at Big Society Capital. Bio Name: Candice Motran Base: Toronto, Canada Position: Investment Director Big Society Capital (BSC) Tenure in current role: 3 years Global issue you...
The Toniic Institute released a new report this week titled "Venture Philanthropists & Impact Investors Sharing - Collaboration Successes & Challenges". The report looks at the maturing impact investment movement, where we're increasingly seeing different types of investment models being deployed to address some of the...
FTSE Russell has launched a Green Revenues Index Series, designed to produce greater exposure for companies that are making strides in the transition to a green economy. The indexes are designed to reflect the changes in the revenue mix of companies as they shift their...
The Bookings Institute features a blog this week by Emily Gustafsson-Wright on the fifth social impact bond announced by the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice. The ministry has announced that it will pay for the successful achievement of employment and prison recidivism outcomes among short-term...
A blog post this week by the Asian Development Bank on the Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business discusses the returns investors are seeing on inclusive business. The commercial viability and bankability of inclusive business investments was a key topic of discussion among investors at the Asian...
A new report released by CDP that analyzes a US$120bn2 grouping of the world's largest cement companies, has found that a tipping point is looming for the industry, with significant innovation required to go well beyond the efficiency improvements achieved to date. The report finds that...