4 - Inside ESG: Sustainable finance and the threat to divest
The Story of Money
Manuela Saragosa
4.4 • 400 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you want your investments to match your principles should a threat to divest be part of your long-term strategy?
In the fourth episode of our special five-part series on sustainable or ESG investing, produced in partnership with the FT’s Moral Money team, the story of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or Calstrs, and why its decision to divest from the US private prisons industry prompted tears and passionate discussion on the board.
Joe Rennison, deputy US markets editor, assesses the long-term impact that divestment can have on companies, while Moral Money’s Patrick Temple-West, Attracta Mooney, the FT’s investment correspondent, and Lindsay Frost, a senior reporter at Agenda, an FT publication about the corporate board space, explain why divestment presents a conundrum for investors and whether passive investment funds are really compatible with ESG investing.
JPMorgan funds invested in CoreCivic debt after vow to stop financing private prisons
Bond funds wrestle with human rights dilemma
Divestment Concerns Creep In for More Industries
Check out stories and up-to-the-minute news from the Moral Money team here.
Get 30 days of the premium Moral Money newsletter free, together with complimentary access to FT.com for the same period, visit www.ft.com/insideesg
Review clips: Calstrs, NBC, Global News, PBS, AP, CBC News, The Guardian, CSPAN
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Am I missing anything? Is this the right decision? |
| 0:02.0 | Could it be a alternative? |
| 0:04.0 | Am I too late? |
| 0:05.0 | Find clarity in your investment decision-making. |
| 0:08.0 | Manage your portfolio for sustainable growth |
| 0:11.0 | and regulatory alignment |
| 0:12.0 | with the ultimate blend of powerful AI and |
| 0:14.6 | industry expertise. |
| 0:16.5 | Reduce risk, meet your sustainability goals and push the boundaries of possibilities based on |
| 0:21.1 | facts, not opinions. |
| 0:23.0 | Clarity AI scaling human decisions through tech. |
| 0:26.6 | Visit clarity. |
| 0:28.0 | AI and take action today. |
| 0:29.6 | Ideally, we should not let emotions determine how we look at our investments. |
| 0:41.6 | But it's pretty hard to separate that. |
| 0:44.8 | That's Dana Dylan. She's a retired teacher. |
| 0:48.8 | She was also for many years a member of the Board of the California State Teachers Retirement Fund or |
| 0:54.9 | Colsters as it's called and as a member of the board it was her job to help decide which |
| 1:00.9 | assets to hold in Colster's investment portfolio. |
| 1:04.0 | But the things that have come to the board have all been in one way or another emotional for me. |
| 1:12.0 | Dana struggled with one particular investment and as you can tell even now several years |
| 1:18.8 | later she still gets emotional about it but then the drama that surrounded it sums up one of the biggest |
... |
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