Impact investing, part 2: Can money meet morals?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In part two of our ESG series, we speak with two insiders who have been involved with ESG since before it was cool. To them, it's come a long way — and is now mainstream enough to have a real impact.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:07.0	Five years ago, Katherine Collins was sitting down with a healthcare executive to talk about
0:17.4	his company's business.
0:19.0	This is a normal part of her job managing money at Putnam investments.
0:23.2	She's supposed to find out if companies have good plans or bad and invest accordingly.
0:28.6	And then at the end, we said, okay, any other core sustainability issues that we didn't
0:33.2	touch on.
0:34.2	And Katherine cares about sustainability issues.
0:36.7	She's the head of sustainable investing at Putnam.
0:39.7	She buys stocks and companies that are supposed to be doing better than their peers on things
0:43.5	like not destroying the Amazon or not giving executives huge severance packages after
0:48.3	harassing employees.
0:49.3	And the person threw up their hands and said, ah, that is G stuff I can't stand those
0:54.0	people.
0:55.0	Yes, G, environmental, social governance, another way to say sustainable investing.
1:00.1	I was like, oh, well, hello, that would be me.
1:03.3	And he said, oh, but you're asking about our strategy.
1:06.0	And so, well, yeah.
1:07.0	And he said, oh, oh, Katherine gets this attitude all the time.
1:12.6	Because as this new label of ESG has caught on, a lot of people have jumped on and new products
1:17.6	have sprung up.
1:18.8	Some more dedicate to the cause, others that just fill out a checklist.
	...

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