NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Athena Capital Advisors, a registered investment adviser that provides investment management, advisory, and outsourced CIO services to private clients and institutions, has released new research on a framework for constructing diversified, multi-asset class investment portfolios that seek both financial and social return.

Building Impact Portfolios, follows release of Impact Investing: History & Opportunity in January 2017. While the earlier paper reviewed the broad landscape of impact investment strategies that are available across asset classes, the new one describes an approach to combining individual investments into a comprehensive and coherent portfolio. It also builds on “Social Finance and the Post-Modern Portfolio: Theory & Practice,” which appeared in the Spring 2016 edition of The Journal of Wealth Management.

“Much of the dialogue about impact investing has focused on specific investments,” observed Athena’s William McCalpin, Managing Partner, Impact Investments. “Identifying and diligencing individual opportunities that align with client interests is important, but so too is organizing them into a portfolio. The paper describes how we are approaching the portfolio construction process in order to solve for each investor’s risk, return, and impact objectives.”

Mr. McCalpin will discuss the firm’s approach during Big Path Capital’s 8^th Annual Impact Capitalism Summit in Chicago on April 25 and 26.

“Since Athena’s founding more than 20 years ago, we have used the principles of modern finance to build and manage client portfolios,” said Lisette Cooper, the firm’s founder and chief investment officer. “Building Impact Portfolios describes how we are extending Modern Portfolio Theory to incorporate the third dimension of impact and using that framework to address the needs of the growing number of clients interested in social return.”