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Gore Offers Sustainable Capitalism as Night-Vision Goggles for InvestorsBy Eric Roston May 20, 2013 7:42 AM EDT 1 Comments "
Bear with me,” Al Gore said to a rapt crowd of about 200 last Monday night at the fourth annual U.S.-India Energy Partnership Summit in Washington. He was asking the audience’s indulgence as he offered a scientific analogy to describe his investment philosophy.
Traditional investors focus on a narrow part of the spectrum of value that any company, or economy, produces, he said. Mainstream accounting in that way is like visible light. It’s all that eyes can see but makes up just 2 percent of the complete electromagnetic spectrum, the band of radiation that extends from high-powered gamma and x-rays to microwave and radio frequencies.Generation Investment Management, the firm Gore founded 10 years ago with former Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chief Executive Officer David Blood, tries to widen the bands of light that it sees by incorporating sustainability analysis. It’s an approach that values environmental, social and governance criteria “ESG” and long-term time horizons.
There’s a lot of information that’s material today — water, carbon, working conditions in far-flung suppliers — that hasn’t always been important to investors before.“If you take the rest of the sustainability factors into account, you can get a fuller and more realistic image, and that’s what we try to do,” he said.Generation Investment Management beta-tested its approach to what Gore and Blood call sustainable capitalism before the firm started investing client money.
It’s worked so far. “Knock on wood, we have done extremely well,” Gore said.Bloomberg News estimated Gore’s wealth last week at $200 million, in a 3,700-word investigation by Ken Wells and Ari Levy. Public filings show that in 2008 through 2011 London-based Generation racked up almost 140 million pounds $218 million in profits to be split among its 26 partners, Wells and Levy wrote. As founders, Gore and Blood are thought to have the largest equity stakes; the firm doesn’t disclose partnership equity or how the partners split profits, a spokesman told Bloomberg News.
Related: Call It What You Like — New Investing Approach Gains Followers: The GridGore Is Romney-Rich With $200 Million After Bush DefeatMajor U.S. Cities at Risk for Climate-Related Water ShortageResource Strain Pushes Coca-Cola, Dow to Put Price Tag on NatureGore cited Generation’s analysis of BP Plc as an example of their approach. “We were invested in British Petroleum, BP, when we started,” he said. The company’s CEO from 1995 to 2007, Lord John Browne, was an early climate hawk and made sustainability a rhetorical and marketing focus. After BP’s 2005 Texas refinery fire and its 2006 pipeline spill in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, Generation “looked at the safety culture and found that it had not been pushed into the American acquisitions. So we got out of BP — before the Deepwater Horizon,” he said.To refine Gores metaphor, sustainable investing is more akin to donning night-vision goggles, which extend human vision into the infrared band. That’s the part of the electromagnetic dial at which bodies radiate heat. It’s the same emission band as that other invisible thing Gore is known for trying to get people to see: atmospheric carbon dioxide.Analysis and commentary on The Grid are the views of the author and dont necessarily reflect the views of Bloomberg News.Visit www.bloomberg.com/sustainability for the latest from Bloomberg News about energy, natural resources and global business.
via Gore Offers Sustainable Capitalism as Night-Vision Goggles for Investors – Bloomberg.
The 32nd annual Natural Products Expo, the largest on record with more than 60,000 industry members and over 2,000 exhibiting companies, filled more than 1 million square feet at the Anaheim Convention Center March 8 – 11, 2012.
 The Yellow 108 hat booth was a popular stop My first Expo West was 1999. Freshly licensed as financial advisor I set out to establish my value. Shared interests and habits brought me to this community, and I’ve been here since. These businesses offer a simple but monumental improvement over the traditional offering of a single bottom line for-profit. Instead of gearing revenue toward the benefit of shareholders, they make sure it benefits all stakeholders. That means shareholders, employees, and the community at large.
Organic, Natural, and Fair Trade, these widely adopted terms express the values of the community I set out to do business with. I was looking for clients who agreed that screens for social responsibility on their long term investments was what their stakeholders wanted. More than a decade ago, at Expo West, I knew I had found my tribe.
Honest Tea, Numi Tea, Sambazon, Guayaki, Organic Trade Association, Tierra Farm and Oregon Tilth are a few of the companies that I met early on and began long standing relationships. Every year I returned since 1999 I found new, like-minded clients. This year I came back again, and thrilled to see how hugely the community had grown.
For all the wrong reasons I missed the last five years of Expo West. A few visits to Expo East, the smaller version of the show, and a full travel calendar kept me away. Those days are over. Expo West 2012 was the largest Natural Products Expo to date and every person I spoke with said business was booming. Attendance was up 13% from 2011 with over 58,000 industry-related people and 3,000 exhibitors. The show is the second largest at The Anaheim Convention Center.
That larger show, held by The National Association of Music Merchants, has been around three times longer than ours, for 110 years. Unlike the Natural Products Expo, NAMM represents an industry composed of almost 100% discretionary spending. Seems to me like we’ll be #1 in no time.
Organic, Natural, and Fair-Trade products are now consumer staples. Every time people go to the store they realize that they do not want products or services rendered at the expense of others. A healthier profit can be made by taking care of every stakeholder affected by your business–employees, communities, and shareholders.
Being able to provide for this particular community at Expo West makes me smile everyday. Thanks everyone.
Rob Thomas
President & Founder
Social(k)
BOSTON, MA–Marketwire – 10/07/09 – The Eventide Gilead Fund NASDAQ:ETGLX – News, a mutual fund practicing values-based and socially responsible investing, was named as a Category King by the Wall Street Journal for the one-year period ending September 30, 2009 for its no-load retail class shares. This is the fifth time in 2009 the Fund has been named Category King by the Wall Street Journal, in recognition of ranking within the top ten funds in its category for fund performance. The Eventide Gilead fund was ranked #2 out of 380 midcap-core funds for the period based upon its investment return. During this period, the Fund generated a return of 15.67% compared with the S&P 500 Index return of 6.91%, an out-performance of 22.58%.
via Eventide Funds | A Values-Based Approach to Investing.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
November 9, 2010
SRI Assets Up 13 Percent in Current Economic Downturn, While Overall Assets Increased Less Than 1 Percent; Several Factors Driving Current and Expected Future SRI Growth.
Despite the recent economic downturn, sustainable and socially responsible investing (SRI) in the United States is continuing to grow at a faster pace than the total universe of investment assets under professional management, according to the new 2010 edition of the Social Investment Forum Foundation’s Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States.
Key report findings include the following:
• The pool of assets engaged in SRI strategies – the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, shareholder advocacy and community investing — has grown more rapidly than the overall investment universe due to such factors as net inflows into existing SRI products, the development of new SRI products, and the adoption of SRI strategies by managers and institutions not previously involved in the field.
• Since 2005, SRI assets have increased more than 34 percent while the broader universe of professionally managed assets has increased only 3 percent. From the start of 2007 to the end of 2009, a three-year period when broad market indices such as the S&P 500 declined and the broader universe of professionally managed assets increased less than 1 percent, assets involved in sustainable and socially responsible investing increased more than 13 percent (from $2.71 trillion to $3.07 trillion).
• Nearly one out of every eight dollars under professional management in the United States today — 12.2 percent of the $25.2 trillion in total assets under management tracked by Thomson Reuters Nelson — is involved in some strategy of socially responsible and sustainable investing.
via Social Investment Forum: Press Release: Report: Socially Responsible Investing Assets in US Top $3 Trillion; Nearly 1 Out of Every 8 Dollars Under Professional Management (11/9/2010).
SocialFunds.com — Founded in 2007 in response to genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and another three million displaced, Investors Against Genocide (IAG) seeks to bring pressure on investment firms to end their investment in companies that contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity.
According to IAG, five Asian oil companies—PetroChina, CNPC Hong Kong, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Sinopec, and PETRONAS—have provided revenue to the government of Sudan for arms and funding of genocide, rather than economic development for the poor people of Sudan. Large mutual funds that have not yet made a commitment to genocide-free investing include Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Vanguard.
In a white paper entitled Genocide-free Investing: New Opportunities for Investors, IAG documents some of the successes it has had in its engagement with financial institutions on the issue. Unlike the three above-named companies, which continue to hold large investments in companies linked to genocide, American Funds and Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) have sold their holdings in companies with ties to the government of Sudan.
via Investors Against Genocide Expands Focus Beyond Shareowner Engagement to Include Recommendations for Financial Advisors.
As investors, we have an opportunity to engage with companies and the public in addressing environmental and other corporate responsibility concerns that inform our investment process.
We employ several different engagement strategies, all of which are integrated into our research and investment process, thereby linking our investment decisions with the success or failure of our company engagements. We also support and collaborate with As You Sow, a non-profit organization using shareholder activism to ensure that corporations act responsibly. Our primary concerns are corporate actions taken at the expense of employees, environment, and community. Communications and Proxy Voting are the primary engagement strategies.
via In Depth – Activism – Portfolio 21.
Portfolio 21 developed and employs the following proprietary framework to evaluate which companies understand their ecological risks and opportunities, and are taking positive action to integrate sustainability strategies in their business models.
In our view, there are no truly sustainable companies in Portfolio 21, therefore no companies excel in all of the areas listed below. However, we select companies with strengths in multiple areas that are well positioned to make further advancements in addressing sustainability challenges.
via In Depth – Investment Philosophy – Company Evaluation Criteria – Portfolio 21.
At Least 17 States Already Allow State Employees to Consider SRI Choice for Retirement Funds
The introduction of the Federal Employees Responsible Investment Act (FERIA), is a significant milestone for socially responsible and sustainable investing (SRI), proposing to grant federal employees the opportunity to select an SRI option in their Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).
The Social Investment Forum (SIF) commends Rep. Jim Langevin, the original sponsor of the bill, (D-R.I.) and original co-sponsors Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Nita Lowey (D-NY) and James McGovern (D-MA) for their leadership on this legislation.
At least 17 states — Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin — already offer their employees the option of investing retirement dollars in SRI funds.
SIF CEO Lisa Woll said: “This measure would give federal employees the range of investment options that many state and private sector employees already have access to by allowing investments in at least one socially responsible index fund. Investors are increasingly turning to socially responsible and sustainable investment (SRI) options because good corporate governance and performance on social and environmental issues are often indicators of financial success, good management and less risk. Many federal employees enter the government to pursue social and environmental goals and are looking for investment options that work towards — rather than against — achieving those goals.”
Rep. Langevin said: “The reckless actions of financial institutions over the past few years provide a clear illustration of why we need to place a greater importance on good corporate governance. That is why I reintroduced the Federal Employees Responsible Investment Act — a bill I have sponsored for the past five years. Investing in companies that are committed to corporate responsibility and sustainability will have a positive impact on our financial system, as well as empower federal employees to reward companies that share their values.”
via Social Investment Forum: Press Release: Social Investment Forum Applauds Introduction of Bill Allowing Federal Employees to Select SRI Retirement Option (9/21/2010).
Investment Objective
The Global Green Fund’s investment objective is to seek long term growth of capital by investing in companies whose businesses and technologies focus on mitigating the environmental impacts of commerce.
Principal Investment Strategies
Under The Global Green Fund follows a Sustainable Investing approach, combining rigorous financial analysis with equally rigorous environmental, social, and governance (ESG) analysis in order to identify investments. Under normal market conditions, the Global Green Fund will invest primarily in equity securities (such as common stocks, preferred stocks, and securities convertible into common or preferred stocks) of companies located around the world, including at least 40% of its net assets in securities of non-U.S. issuers. The Global Green Fund invests in environmental markets—companies whose businesses and technologies focus on mitigating the environmental impacts of commerce, including such areas as alternative energy and energy efficiency; water treatment and pollution control; and waste technology and resource management.
via Global Green Fund | PAX World Mutual Funds.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.
The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.
The Sept. 1, 2009, amendment to Prudential’s contract with the VA ratified another unpublicized deal that had been struck between the insurer and the government 10 years earlier — one that was never put into writing, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. This verbal agreement in 1999 provoked concern among top insurance officials of the agency, the documents released in the FOIA request show.
via Veterans Agency Made Secret Deal With Prudential Over Benefits – Bloomberg.
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