Seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the great promise of the 21st Century – the Paris Accord. Can you believe, it is now five years on (260 weeks or so this December) since the meeting in the “City of Lights” of the Conference of Parties (“COP 21”, a/k/a the U.N. Paris Climate Conference). This was the 21st meeting of the global assemblage focused on climate change challenges.
Looking back 90+ years to the 1920s, corporate financial disclosure was in essence, a joke. (Why, said one public company leadership, would we ever tell investors what our real financial condition is!) Financial reporting was voluntary! And then…came the 1929 market crash.
Change is a-coming – quite quickly now – for corporate sustainability reporting frameworks and standards organizations.
Before the disastrous October 1929 stock market crash, there was little in the way of disclosure and reporting requirements for companies with public stockholders. The State of New York had The Martin Act, passed in 1921, a “blue sky law” that regulates the sales and trades of public companies to address fraud issues.
As 2020 Began, $1-in-$3 of Professionally Managed AUM in the United States Had ESG Analysis and/or Portfolio Management Strategies Applied…US$17.1 Trillion Total
Every two years, since 1996, the influential trade organization for sustainable, responsible and impact investment (US SIF) conducts a year-long survey of professional asset managers to determine the total of USA-based assets under management (“AUM”) that have ESG analysis and/or portfolio management applied.
Indexes – Indices - Benchmarks – these are very important analysis and portfolio management tools for asset owners and their internal and external managers. We can think of them as a sort of report card; fiduciaries can track their performance against the funds they manage; financial sector players can develop products for investment (mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds, separate accounts and so on) to market to investors.
The United Nations projection is for today’s global population of an estimated 7.6 billion people to expand to a global population of 8.6B by 2030 and 9.8B by 2050...and then to 11.2 billion in 2100 (says the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs report, June 2017). Each year, says the UN, 83 million more people are added to the world’s population.
Banks have long been at the center of the U.S. economy, and federal policies (legislation, rules) for the last century have been designed to support, encourage and protect banking institutions, and the customers the banks serve.
The United Nations members states -- the global family of sovereign nations collaborating peacefully for seven-plus decades to address common challenges -- got good news on its 75th anniversary.
More than one thousand business leaders from 100+ nations endorsed a Statement of Renewed Global Cooperation, pledging to further unite in helping to help to make this a better world…for the many, not the few. Some of the world’s best known brand marketers placed their signatories on the document.
Welcome to Highlights issue #500 – a landmark, we will say, in this, the tenth anniversary year of publishing the G&A Institute’s weekly newsletter. As you see, this is also an enhanced format that is intended to make the newsletter easier to read or scan as well.
Our newsletter is designed to share timely, informative content in topic/issue “buckets” that we think will be of value to you, our reader. So much is happening in the sustainable investing and corporate sustainability spaces these days – we work hard to help you keep up with the important stuff!
Here is the Transition From the Long-Dominant Worldview of “Stockholder Capitalism” in a Changed World
As readers of Highlights know, the shift from “stockholder” to “stakeholder” capitalism has been underway in earnest for a good while now and the public dialogue about this “21st Century Sign of Progress” has been quite lively. What helped to really frame the issue in 2019 were two developments:
