This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Maggie L. Walker founded St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903, a time when Jim Crow laws and institutionalized prejudice conspired to prevent blacks from borrowing money or from even having bank accounts. This was done, of course, to keep blacks in a position of economic servitude, a situation blacks still suffer from to this day. Born a year before emancipation, Ms. Walker, the daughter of a former slave, is the first American women to have successfully opened a bank. (Having attempted in 2008 to raise $50 million to create  a black-owned bank holding company  to make capital investments in and own parts of new and existing black-owned U.S. banks, I can tell you that this is no easy task.) She did so in the South. In Richmond, Va., the capital of the confederacy. during a time when even white women were not allowed to vote.  In the South . (Oh, and she also led a boycott of Richmond’s segregated trolley car system, 50 years  before  the Montgomery Bus Boyc...

That's funny..SO ARE WE!

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recent report defines tokens sold through ICO offerings as “securities.” This is neither appropriate nor in the public interest. This definition will restrict the ability of startups to raise much needed capital without having to go to commercial banks, investment banks and venture capitalists, institutions who long ago abdicated their role in providing capital to deserving startups and small businesses. (Commercial banks, investment banks and venture capitalists focus on providing capital to a narrow group of non-minority and non female firms. As Uber and others (Google?) have shown, many of the women who dared work for these commercial bank, investment bank and venture capitalist supported firms found themselves harassed..and we know what happened when they sought funding.) In a press release, the SEC concluded that anyone using "..distributed ledger or blockchain enabled means for capital raising (needs) to take appropriate st...

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s concern about “initial coin offerings” is understandable. There are significant problems in the ICO marketplace, but new markets always have issues. Unfortunately, the SEC’s recent restrictions defining the tokens sold through such offerings as “securities” completely miss the point and once again will constrain the ability of startups to raise much-needed capital without having to go to a bank or venture capitalist first. See:  https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/sec-takes-jab-at-startups-while-leaving-the-big-banks-alone