Sustainable Investing A Path to a New Horizon

About this book

This book tells the story of how the convergence between corporate sustainability and sustainable investing is now becoming a major force driving systemic market changes. The idea and practice of corporate sustainability is no longer a niche movement. Investors are increasingly paying attention to sustainability factors in their analysis and decision-making, thus reinforcing market transformation.

In this book, high-level practitioners and academic thought leaders, including contributions from John Ruggie, Fiona Reynolds, Johan Rockström, and Paul Polman, explain the forces behind these developments. The contributors highlight (a) that systemic market change is influenced by various contextual factors that impact how sustainable investing is perceived and practiced; (b) that the integration of ESG factors in investment decisions is impacting markets on a large scale and hence changes practices of major market players (e.g. pension funds); and (c) that technology and the increasing datafication of sustainability act as further accelerators of such change.

The book goes beyond standard economic theory approaches to sustainable investing and emphasizes that capitalism founded on more real-world (complex) economics and cooperation can strengthen ESG integration. Aimed at both investment professionals and academics, this book gives the reader access to more practitioner-relevant information and it also discusses implementation issues. The reader will gain insights into how "mainstream" financial actors relate to sustainable investing.

Contents

Foreword by Mark Carney
1. Sustainable Investing: A Path to a New Horizon / Herman Bril, Georg Kell and Andreas Rasche

PART I: THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABLE INVESTING
2. Business and Sustainability, From the Firm to the Biosphere / Simon Levin, Martin Reeves and Ania Levina
3. Renewing Markets from Within: How Businesses and the Investment Community Can Drive Transformational Change / Georg Kell and Andreas Rasche
4. Good Governance: Navigating on Purpose and Complexity Based Principles / Theo Kocken and Stefan Lundbergh
5. The End of the Beginning: Next Generation Responsible Investment / Fiona Reynolds and Nathan Fabian, with Rory Sullivan
6. Planetary Boundaries: A Compass for Investing for the Common Good / Johan Rockström, Almut Beringer, Beatrice Crona, Owen Gaffney and Daniel Klingenfeld

PART II: RETHINKING SUSTAINABLE FINANCE AND LEADERSHIP
7. Navigating the ESG World / Patrick Bolton, Simon Levin and Frédéric Samama
8. A New Age For Responsible Banking / Eric Usher
9. Corporate Purpose in Play: The Role of ESG Investing / John G. Ruggie
10. What Corporates Can Do to Move the Financial Markets to a Longer-Term and More Responsible Mindset / Paul Polman and Halla Tómasdóttir
11. Embedding Values and Principles / Mark Moody-Stuart

PART III: SUSTAINABLE INVESTING, TECHNOLOGY, AND DATA
12. ESG and AI: The Beauty and the Best of Sustainable Investing / Omar Selim
13. FutureMakers and climate change modelling: method to the madness / Helga Birgden
14. Data Defense in Sustainable Investing / Ashby Monk, Marcel Prins and Dane Rook

PART IV: ACCELERATING TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE
15. Investing Sustainably: Transforming Asset Owners from Sayers to Doers / Keith Ambachtsheer
16. Building a Balanced and Scalable Strategic Asset Allocation to Meet Financial and ESG Impact Goals / Karen Karniol-Tambour, Carsten Stendevad, Daniel Hochman, Jacob Davidson, and Brian Kreiter
17. The Imperative of Sustainable Investing for Asset Owners / Herman Bril
18. Sustainable Investing: Shaping the Future of Theory and Practice / Herman Bril, Georg Kell and Andreas Rasche

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Biography

Herman Bril joined the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) in New York as Director of the Office of Investment Management in June of 2016. He has over 25 years of experience in international financial institutions in multiple countries.

Georg Kell is Chairman of Arabesque, an ESG Quant fund manager that uses self-learning quantitative models and big data to assess the performance and sustainability of globally listed companies. Georg is the founding Director of the United Nations Global Compact.

Andreas Rasche is Professor of Business in Society at the Centre for Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and also acts as the Associate Dean for the CBS MBA program. He is a Visiting Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics.