Spotlight on Small/Mid Cap Stocks
Investing For a Better World: Spring 2013 Big companies tend to grab most of the business headlines, but smaller, more obscure firms often provide attractive investment opportunities while being the most innovative agents of social change. Trillium’s Small/Mid Cap Core Composite was created on January 1, 2007. As of March 31, 2013, the portfolio contained 68 stocks and had produced annualized gross returns that are 81 basis point greater than the S&P 1000 returns since the inception of the composite [1]. We asked Trillium’s analyst team to name their favorite small companies (defined here as companies with a market capitalization …
New Report: Pay Day Lending Traps Borrowers in Long-Term Cycle of Debt
The report, an update of Center for Responsible Lending’s (CRL) 2011 report, Big Bank Payday Loans, provides further evidence that “pay day” and “direct deposit advances” trap low-wealth and low-income borrowers in a cycle of expensive and increasing debt, causing serious financial harm. These are short-term balloon loans that borrowers are unable to repay in full when due. The loans carry triple-digit interest rates and lack meaningful underwriting to assess a borrower’s ability to repay. According to the March 21, 2013 report: • In 2011, bank payday borrowers took out an average of 19 loans. • Bank payday borrowers were …
Trillium’s 2012 Corporate Engagement Highlights
Susan Baker, Vice President, Trillium Asset Management Over the course of 2012, Trillium engaged with over two dozen major U.S. and foreign corporations to address a wide range of concerns, including climate change, sustainable agriculture and fisheries, Indigenous rights and environmental justice, political spending, labor and human rights, diversity and non-discrimination, and a free and open Internet. Below are a few important highlights. Climate Change and Sustainable Agriculture Trillium’s shareholder proposal at J.M. Smucker on the sustainability of its coffee supply chain received 30% support. We re-filed the proposal, focusing on the well-being of coffee-farming families and a sustainability strategy. …
Financial Reform Hits the Skids
Jonas Kron In March of this year, in the depths of the market sell-off, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner appeared before the House Financial Services Committee to discuss the need to fix the nation’s financial regulatory system. Geithner told the committee “Our system failed in fundamental ways,” and to “address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.” This conclusion was echoed by Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the committee. “The days of light-touch regulation are over,” he said. The implications of the crisis went even further. As New York …
Trillium Files Resolutions on Sudan Genocide
Trillium Asset Management Corporation Files Resolutions on the Sudan Genocide In December 2007, Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”), working in coalition with human rights organizations and other socially responsible investment firms, filed shareholder resolutions with major banks and financial firms with the goal of engaging Wall Street to push Sudan to end the violence in Darfur and accept full deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. Trillium filed resolutions at JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. These Wall Street powerhouses are among the largest shareholders in the “Big 4” petroleum companies doing business in Sudan, whose royalties to the government have financed …
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