ESG
A Conversation with Steve Waygood of Aviva Investors
Capital Institute spoke recently with Steve Waygood, Head of Sustainability Research at Aviva Investors, to learn more about the advocacy work the company— with $433 billion in assets under management—has undertaken to advance the cause of more transparent reporting and management of sustainability risk. We also talked with Waygood about how Aviva Investors has embedded sustainability practices into its own operations, his broad concerns about the flawed methodologies that are currently used to value corporate assets and profitability, and the role both policymakers and the private sector need to play in addressing those flaws.
Finance for Sustainability: The Future of Business Education
Submitted by Dan Thompson on Mon, 01/30/2012 - 3:41pm
Author:
John Fullerton I was honored to join Majora Carter, Eban Goodstein, and Elysa Hammond at the launch of Bard College's new MBA in Sustainability last week to discuss how finance has been a major factor driving our ecological and social crises and how fixing finance must be a part of the solution. The ideas I presented - an all hands on deck, bottom-up and top-down/systemic approach to sustainable finance - are at the core of a new finance curriculum the Capital Institute is helping Bard design. Below are the slides from my address. For more information on the MBA in Sustainability program, visit http://www.bard.edu/mba/.
ESG and the Problem with Business as Usual
We were very pleased to read Al Gore and David Blood’s “Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism” in the WSJ last week. It called for “a framework that seeks to maximize long-term economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.” Companies that integrate sustainability into their business models and investors who evaluate them on that basis, the manifesto claims, are finding their profitability enhanced over the longer term.
