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Weekly Roundup 10-23-15: Impact Investing Recovers from ‘The Cooties’
Most people don’t associate Department of Labor policy changes with excitement. But this week’s announcement of changes to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has primed the impact investing movement to party like it’s 1994. We explore the move in this roundup, along with some inspiring words on what every social entrepreneur should ask themselves, and some critical points on business school ethics.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Does Divestment Work?
Beginning in the early nineteen-eighties, students on college campuses across the U.S. demanded that their universities stop investing in companies that conducted business in South Africa, in protest of the apartheid system. As an example of social activism, the campaign was a phenomenal success: by the end of the decade, about a hundred and fifty educational institutions had divested. But did the campaign succeed in pressuring the South African government to dismantle apartheid? The answer is less obvious than you might think. The economists Siew Hong Teoh, Ivo Welch, and C. Paul Wazzan studied how U.S. divestment movements affected the South African financial market and the share prices of U.S. companies with South African operations. Divestments were expected, on average, to decrease share prices, but the study found that, in fact, political pressure turned out to have no discernible effect on the shares’ public market valuations. According to the authors, a possible explanation of this finding is that “the boycott primarily reallocated shares and operations from ‘socially responsible’ to more indifferent investors and countries.”
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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Will This ‘Back to the Future’ Move Put The Pedal To The Metal For Impact Investing?
A Return To 1994 Policy Guidance Clears Way For Pension Fund Fiduciaries To Consider Social Impact.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Technology
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- impact investing
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When It Doesn’t Make Sense NOT to Invest: Tyler Norris of Kaiser Permanente on healthy communities and creating change
Tyler Norris, vice president of Total Health Partnerships at Kaiser Permanente, has spent more than three decades promoting better health, working in the public, private, nonprofit and civic sectors. A lot of his ideas are framed around the concept that healthy communities lead to healthy people and, therefore, community health should be a big part of impact investing.
- Categories
- Health Care
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ImpactAssets Releases Annual IA 50 Impact Investment Fund Showcase
ImpactAssets has released its 2015 impact investing showcase, the ImpactAssets 50 (IA 50), a free online resource for investors and financial advisors. The fifth annual guide features fund managers representing private debt and equity investments that deliver social and environmental impact as well as financial returns.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Women More Likely to Look at Social/Environmental Factors When They Invest, While Men Want High Returns
When it comes to ethical investing, which is the fairer sex?
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- impact investing
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The Younger the Investors, the More They Care About Values
The global investment management industry may not know what has hit it. Leadership does not always come from the grey haired folk, particularly in an age of fast technological change, where the best ideas can rise up from the crowd, without structure or planned deliberation.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing
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NexThought Monday: Four Steps to Unlock the Potential of Impact Investing: SOCAP15 conference highlights critical areas where the sector should focus
The excitement about the growing impact investing field was palpable at the recent SOCAP15 conference, as evidence accumulates that it is moving from the margins to the mainstream. But in spite of this momentum, the sector still has far to go to reach its full potential. Based on conversations and panel discussions at SOCAP15, here are four areas that impact investing should address.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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