This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

Bits & Pretzels (B&P) is the German equivalent of the South by Southwest  (SXSW) startup event. B&P is Europe’s biggest startup/founders festival. The event will be held from September 29 to October 2, 2020. Speakers include: Eric Schmidt, Former CEO Google, Co-founder Schmidt Futures Dirk Nowitzki, Basketball superstar Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global  Former speakers include Barack Obama, Richard Branson, Jessica Alba and many other world leaders in the global startup ecosystem. Bits invented Table Captain Networking for startups to connect face-to-face with experts in small networking sessions. Each session is 40 minutes long for up to 6 attendees and are perfectly timed and sized for startups to ask questions. We will host a Networking session at the event on September 30th. 

September 24, 2020 In a discussion led by William Michael Cunningham, Mr. Tarrell Gamble, Ms. Wendy Garcia, and Dr. Ruchi Dana spoke about their experience with diversity within the investment management business sector.  Starting with women in the workforce, Dr. Dana noted research that shows companies with more women are also more capital efficient.  Dr. Dana also noted that gender diversity is an important starting point when considering balanced executive boards. She stated that female consumers make up $20 trillion of consumer spending. This is larger than the GDP of both India and China combined. Therefore, Dr. Dana notes, it is important to have women on corporate boards who understand this perspective. She finished with noting that "In a society where firms are mainly white male owned, there exist many systemic barriers. When looking to hire investment consultants, firms must also be conscious of the language they use to refer to their employees...

On December 26, 2016, Creative Investment Research noted that: "Under any conceivable scenario, the current situation is very bad, and I mean toxic, for democratic institutions in general and for people of color specifically. Bottom line: our Fully Adjusted Return Forecast** indicates that, over time, things will get much, much worse....." (See: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trumpism-william-michael-cunningham-am-mba/ ) Now, after months of economic uncertainty and volatility, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Reuters Events Investment Summit With markets in decline and economies around the world pointed towards recession, Reuters Events' Investment Summit (Dec. 3-4) unites financial institutions and investors to tackle the future of investment at this unprecedented moment. Combining onstage inspiration with intimate peer-to-peer networking, the two-day flagship will cover four key themes: Market Drivers and Outlook: Learn how macroeconomics, geopolitics, ...

What is Investment Research And Why Is It Broken? Investment research studies of the performance of stocks, bonds, metals, mutual funds, and other assets. This is done, most often, to influence investment decision making. It seeks to "produce a guide to what investments to make.” With the capture of regulatory authorities (who are, supposedly, looking out of the public interest) by financial institutions, the number of investment "assets" has increased. There are now more than 5,000,000 different types of investment vehicles. Many have little actual value. A new investment class with actual value may be cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency is a  digital program or asset designed to work like currency .  Bitcoin  is a  cryptocurrency. What is Investment Research? As we note in our online class , investing is "the process of spending money in order to increase the original dollar amount." Investment research provides timely information that, combi...

For many majority-owned institutions, the concepts of "monetary gain" and "social good" have long been regarded as mutually exclusive. We see this most directly in the recent attempt by the Labor Department to shut down Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing : “Private employer-sponsored retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan,” said Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia. But this ignores the facts: investing has always been used to further social goals. Claims that it is difficult to determine the worth of "ESG" or "Social Investments" have not prevented majority-owned institutions from using these factors while making decidedly "anti-social" investments. For example, on July 24, 2020, major "investment" bank Goldman Sachs was fined $3.9 billion by the country of Malaysia to settle criminal charges that the bank conducte...