“We all know the basic premise — that assets with more risk should generally be compensated with higher returns. The more risk you take, the more return you should expect. The empirical reality is that isn’t really true,” said Treacy, an institutional portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments Inc., during his session. He argued that the […]
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is investing $100 million in a subscription commerce platform company. The investment in AppDirect Capital will be used to accelerate the growth of the AppSmart Invest program, a recently launched business-facing online technology marketplace that connects buyers with expert advisors. The marketplace is designed to help subscribing […]
A high-profile fraud case and a devastating oil spill directly inspired Maria Elena Drew to focus on environmental, social and governance factors in her investment career. During her session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2021 Investment Innovation Conference, the director of research in responsible investing at T. Rowe Price said she began her ESG journey […]
Investing is undergoing a paradigm shift, which will see investors do well by doing good, according to John Levy, director of impact at Franklin Templeton Investments. “Traditional investing is agnostic about its role on the planet, local communities and society. At some point, something like what we now call sustainable investing came along,” he said during […]
The OPSEU Pension Trust is shifting toward responsible investing as environmental, social and governance factors become increasingly more material to returns for institutional investors. “We’re seeing a lot of shifting sands around consumer preferences and expectations,” said Alison Loat, managing director of sustainable investing and innovation at OPTrust, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review‘s […]
Institutional investors can play a role in reconciliation efforts by embracing the growth opportunities presented by Canada’s Indigenous communities, according to Kevin Thomas, chief executive officer of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education. Joined by Mark Sevestre, senior advisor and founding member of the National Aboriginal Trust Officers Association, during a session at the […]
Before Alison Loat joined the OPSEU Pension Trust as its first managing director of sustainable investing and innovation in 2019, her experience with sustainability investing had only been peripheral. “Although I did not come from the responsible investing world, I could see the tides were starting to turn. It was clear that a lot more […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is appointing Jonathan Hausman as senior managing director of its newly created global investment strategy department. The new department aims to provide the Ontario Teachers’ with a global competitive advantage by developing strategic responses to emerging themes affecting multiple asset classes and regions, according to a press release, which noted […]
In his keynote address at the 2021 Global Investment Conference, Karthik Ramanna, professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, described the practice of greenwashing in corporate environmental, social and governance reports as “rampant.” “I’m going to give you some fairly specific tactical tools to tell the signal […]
With gas and oil prices reaching new heights last week, panicking both politicians and consumers, we must ask ourselves if this behaviour is typical of commodity prices in every business cycle or if we’re at the threshold of a major economic disaster? In the 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor analyzed commodity prices and their behaviour over the […]