SustainabilityHQ.com Weekly Highlights

The FTI Consulting business advisory firm surveyed a set of 130 global institutional investors to gauge the depth and breadth of U.S. assets invested using ESG principles. This group of investors, contacted from May through July 2018, responded that their Assets Under Management totaling US$8.4 trillion was believed to have benefitted by the contribution of extra [corporate] value to a company with a high ESG rating.

Question: Does a corporate sustainability program “cost” (and thus shows up on the “expense” side of the ledger) or are there measurable “returns” on the investments that companies are making to develop or adjust strategies, assemble teams and launch sustainability programs? (Especially those that have set goals and where progress is measured and then publicly reported.)

We frequently hear this kind of discussion in the phone calls we have with corporate managers, especially those at companies where management is now considering what to do or perhaps just starting out on their sustainability journey.

Ratings, rankings, scores, best of lists – these are increasingly important to corporate issuers and for investors.

The popular CBS TV Network nighttime host David Letterman for many years provided us with periods of laughter with his well-known top 10 list segments. (Example: The Top 10 Stupid Things Americans Say to Brits.)

Global faith leaders can directly and indirectly affect significant changes in our global society. One leader with high visibility and strong opinions on important societal issues is the Holy Father in Rome, Pope Francis. The Roman Catholic Church as a collective institution is one of the largest owners and holders of assets in the world, including pension systems of various orders, Catholic charities, healthcare systems, and more.

At the recent IBM Think 2019 Conference, fascinating artificial intelligence (“AI”) innovations were showcased; these are approaches in development to help meet the needs of global stressed food and water ecosystems.

The European Union adopted a Sustainable Finance Action Plan in May 2018; the package of measures included a proposal for a regulation to establish a framework to facilitate sustainable investment. The aim is to create a unified classification system or taxonomy on what could be considered to be “an environmentally-sustainable economic opportunity”.

A 2018 survey by Morgan Stanley took the pulse of U.S. asset managers (with in-depth telephone interviews) to determine the level of adoption of sustainable investing approaches by asset managers in the United States.

Here we are in the new millennium, since 2000 or 2001 (the clear delineation has been debated) and the generation that straddles the 20th and 21st centuries has characteristics that may be quite different for employers (and as customers, investors, voters).

The Millennial Generation has been defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as those men and women born between 1981 and 1996, who are 23-to-38 years of age in 2019. (For sure, the exact definition of generations is not always in general agreement.) This cohort succeeded the smaller-sized “Generation Xers” and the large Baby Boom generation (born 1946-1964, originally 77 million strong and two-thirds larger than the “Silents” before them). The long-dominant Boomer population has been decreasing in size since 2012…so what comes next for the

Strategy – the familiar word comes down to us over the eons from the language of ancient Greece. The roots of the original word (translated to “stratagem”) mean “the work of the generals, or generalship” which is to clearly say: to lead from the front..or the top!

“Ethical sourcing” – we see that a lot of companies are systematically addressing issues in their sourcing and supply chain management to better understand and address (and better manage!) the various issues that their investors, customers, employees, business partners, and other stakeholders care about. What is “ethical” behavior in the layers upon layers of suppliers in the usual globalized sourcing effort?