Middlebury College Panel Discussion: Challenges and Opportunities of Socially Responsible Investing
On Monday, April 7, 2014 Trillium’s Stephanie Leighton, CFA participated in a SRI-focused panel at Middlebury College in Vermont. Stephen Diehl, of the Middlebury College Pressroom, writes: “The panel, moderated by Student Government Association President Rachel Liddell ’15, included six investment experts and focused on how institutions can incorporate an Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) framework in their investment-selection process and how professionals evaluate fossil-fuel investments in educational and foundation endowments… Trillium Asset Management partner and portfolio manager Stephanie Leighton said her firm is seeing less of the avoidance approach that characterized divestment from South Africa in the 1980s. ‘The real trend …
Guardian Sustainable Business: Privacy and Data Security: Why Should Investors Care?
On Tuesday, May 28, 2013, the Guardian Sustainable Business printed an Op-ed which is co-authored by Trillium’s Natasha Lamb, Corey Johnson of Pax World Funds and Michael Connor, the Executive Director of Open MIC, a non-profit organization that works with companies and investors on open media issues. The authors note: “…While privacy is vital to consumers, ensuring proper data management is also critical to investors in publicly-held US companies. Our research shows that even the largest and most sophisticated enterprises may not be adequately prepared to deal with these challenges. The Securities and Exchange Commission highlighted the importance of the …
Still “Impactful” After All These Years
Jonas Kron, JD In the Winter 2011 issue of Investing For A Better World, our colleague Farnum Brown described shareholder advocacy as version 2.0 on SRI’s (socially responsible investment’s) travels towards 3.0, and discussed the importance of directly pressing companies to improve their environmental and social impacts. Similarly, Amy Domini of Domini Social Investments recently wrote passionately in the Huffington Post about the importance of shareholder advocacy as a meaningful way for investors to have a positive impact on the world. Both pieces touched upon the ongoing debate about what to call our field. What was once “socially responsible” or …
Yes, We Can, Too
Everyone, from the progressive Left to “Obamican” crossovers, has high hopes for the new administration. Social investors are no exception. We share the expectation that the Obama administration will take a hands-on approach to many of the problems we’ve addressed for years, including climate change and other environmental priorities, predatory lending, inadequate regulation of the financial markets and much more. There’s a subset of policy reforms, however, that are being championed more or less exclusively by the social investing community, and those are the subject of this article. What follows is a brief summary of some of the policy reforms …
Sustainable Returns
How High Are Sustainable Financial Returns? The investment ecosystem has reached a tipping point and the interest in responsible, sustainable investing is surging. Asset owners with over $10 trillion have signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. The Investor Network on Climate Risk now has over $5 trillion behind it. The leading investment consultant to Foundations will now provide Mission Related Investing services. More corporations are institutionalizing sustainability concepts into their organizations and business education is inching away from the blinkered study of money making toward imagining socially positive enterprises with multiple bottom lines. A recent online survey …
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