Indexes, Short-sellers, Gender-lens, and Entrepreneurship
Here are 5 things you might have missed this week:
40% annual increase in the number of ESG indexes-
Fourth Index Industry Association’s annual survey reveals significant growth in ESG, continued multi-asset innovation & heightened competition.
Index providers responded to a year of market disruption & global pandemic by not only meeting those challenges but by expanding their global product offerings & diversifying into new asset classes.
Indexes covering fixed income markets grew 7.1% in the past year and nearly 15% in the last two years.
Short-sellers step up scrutiny of ESG stocks-
FT reports: As the demand for ESG compliant assets increase investors need to be more aware of the quality of the asset as well as the value of the asset.
"As interest in ESG has surged, they have been on the prowl, looking for companies where investors have overlooked flaws and fraud in the rush to gain exposure to a technology or sector."
Shorts are important in the ESG space because it is so “white-hot” right now, says Rob Furdak, chief investment officer for ESG of Man Group, a hedge fund. “People are looking for any kind of sustainable angle and want to jump on the bandwagon when they see the potential for these new technologies to really be game-changers,” he says.
However, there are some who see short sellers doing more harm than good. Hiro Mizuno, the former head of the world’s largest pension fund, stopped lending out securities from the Japanese scheme last year because he believed shorting was antithetical to his mission of long-term value creation.
Source: https://amp-ft-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.ft.com/content/b8c91561-b44c-43cf-9810-7aeff9c377a8
How Gender Lens Investing Is Gaining Ground-
Project Sage 3.0. is a new report from the Wharton Social Impact Initiative that discusses gender lens investing.
The research paper finds a dramatic increase in gender lens investing over the last few years.
A total of 138 private equity and venture capital firms have raised a cumulative $4.8 billion through 2019 for funds that invest in gender-diverse teams and generate a positive impact on women.
There is also a 20-minute podcast with Sandi M. Hunt from the Wharton Social Impact Initiative and Suzanne Biegel from Catalyst at Large discussing their new report.
Source: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-gender-lens-investing-is-gaining-ground/
Social Entrepreneurship, Nowhere to Grow-
The systematic scale-up of social entrepreneurs’ solutions by Big International NGOs (BINGOs) is simply not a thing. Why not?
"The truth is that no matter how good you are, your solution likely won’t achieve its potential unless others—preferably bigger others—begin to replicate and scale it as well."
"We asked CEOs of Big International NGOs (BINGOs), BINGO board members, and a few select people with a long, broad view of the social sector if they could name one solution from the social entrepreneur world that had been effectively scaled via the BINGOs. With no hesitation, but more than a little agonizing, the across-the-board answer was no."
Why not?
People don’t scale up other peoples’ solutions, as if the whole notion was ludicrous for not being them who invented the solutions in the first place. "We have a solution to help you have your cake and eat it too: Pretend you invented it! We don’t care, we just want to see impact at scale."
Growing Impact: New Insights into the Practice of Impact Investing-
IFC has published a report highlighting the enormous potential to invest for impact in public equity markets.
Impact investing in private markets could be as large as $2.1 trillion in assets under management, but only a quarter of that, $505 billion, is clearly measured for its impact, both for development impact and financial returns.
The publication includes trends in impact investing, survey results of investor practices, and 32 case stories from signatories to the Operating Principles for Impact Management on how they are implementing them.
One more thing: Our Planet: Too Big to Fail. This 42-minute film explores the risks of inaction, the impact of investing-as-usual, and the role the finance sector can play in powering a sustainable future.
Watch the video here- https://www.ourplanet.com/en/video/our-planet-too-big-to-fail/
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