5 - Inside ESG: A sceptic vs a believer, our experts face off
The Story of Money
Manuela Saragosa
4.4 • 400 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The amount of money flowing into investment funds that claim to invest in sustainable businesses has surged in recent years. More companies than ever have embraced policies with environmental, social and corporate governance criteria as their central plank. But there's a debate over what ESG investing can achieve, particularly when it comes to cutting carbon emissions and addressing climate change.
In the final episode of our five-part series on ESG investing, we hear from two leading FT voices on opposite sides of the argument. Cheering the rise of ESG is Gillian Tett, the FT’s US editor-at-large and co-founder of Moral Money, the FT team that covers sustainable business and finance; and casting a sceptical eye is the FT’s US financial commentator Robert Armstrong, who also writes Unhedged, the FT newsletter on Wall Street.
The ESG investing industry is dangerous
A carbon price should be top of the wish list at the climate talks
The need to elevate developing countries at COP26
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Am I missing anything? Is this the right decision? |
| 0:02.0 | Can I show this data? |
| 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. |
| 0:30.8 | So here's the question. The question we asked right at the start of this series about |
| 0:36.4 | sustainable investing. Can you make money and leave the world a better place? |
| 0:41.8 | This is like the fastest or one of the fastest growing |
| 0:44.8 | areas of the asset management industry. It has ballooned. |
| 0:48.2 | Sustainable or ESG investing as it's called is big business in financial markets. |
| 0:54.0 | There was at least in my mind this idea that we could reform capitalism. |
| 0:58.0 | Many companies have embraced policies that take environmental governance and social issues on board. |
| 1:04.7 | It's a way for companies to kind of think more broadly than just about making money. |
| 1:08.8 | Your climate solution as a business would be to reduce your carbon footprint. It would be profitable and if you |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Manuela Saragosa, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Manuela Saragosa and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.