NextBillion - A WDI Publication

About This Event
For decades, institutional investors have treated authoritarianism mainly as a political or ethical issue—managed by governance committees, exclusion lists, or country-risk experts—not as a primary consideration in portfolio construction.

That approach is no longer defensible.

Authoritarianism today functions less as a discrete regime type and more as a systemic institutional condition: the steady erosion of institutional checks on power, weakening of the rule of law, and degradation of information integrity. When these conditions take hold, as they are in the United States, they undermine the systemic frameworks on which modern capital markets depend. Performance of individual stocks and portfolio’s become increasingly influenced by proximity to power and whether the firm is in the good graces of political leaders. Jed has written a series of Substack posts about the risks posed to investors (large and small) by authoritarian political systems.

Our session will be a reflection on the drift toward authoritarianism in the US and abroad, exploring ideas regarding how authoritarianism—despite a short term run up in the stock market!—is bad for business and investors. We’ll review key concepts from Jed’s writings on the topic of authoritarianism as investor risk and then discuss the need for business and community leaders to raise our voice in opposition to executive overreach. An active discussion will follow, including how to slow democratic backsliding.

About the Speaker
Jed Emerson is founder of Blended Value Group, a consulting and advisory firm working with investment firms, funds, family offices and foundations to advance more effective wealth management and impact investing strategy and practice.

Emerson is a Senior Fellow with the Blended Finance Initiative at the University of Zurich, a Senior Research Fellow at University of Heidelberg’s Center on Social Investing in Germany and has held faculty appointments at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford business schools. He has taught social entrepreneurship at Kellogg Business School, Harvard Business School, and NYU-Abu Dhabi.

In the late 90s, Emerson coined the concept of Blended Value to describe the reality that the value we create in our lives and through our investing is a blend of social, environmental and economic elements. While the value we create is whole, society asks us to choose between doing well or doing good, making money or engaging in philanthropy and working in nonprofit or for-profit organizations. Emerson’s last book, The Purpose of Capital: Elements of Impact, Financial Flows, and Natural Being, explores how we may bridge the divide between how we think about doing well and doing good.

Time: 4:00 PM ET