All Long Term Matters articles
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FeaturesLong term matters: ISSB, please don’t choose to play small
The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is a major development. ISSB has rightly made climate risk its initial priority but now has an important choice to make. Will it help investors address climate-related systemic risk or will it continue with ‘business as usual’, enabling investors to play small?
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FeaturesLong term matters: What COP26 means for you
Whether the COP26 glass is half full or half empty is the wrong question.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Vaccine apartheid and investors
This column last covered COVID-19 vaccine inequity in June. Since then, using The Economist’s model of “excess deaths”, there may have been more than 4m deaths globally. That means 37,700 people dying every day, arguably unnecessarily. This number comes with many caveats but it’s possible (indeed probable) that the figure could be much higher.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Commenting from the cheap seats or on the playing field?
Scientifically literate investment executives who care about the future of human civilisation and the ecosystem will be painfully aware that Jean-Claude Juncker’s comment about the euro-zone also relates to the climate crisis.
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FeaturesLong term matters: It’s corporate tax, stupid
Bill Clinton used the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” to help him win the 1992 US presidential election. The same now applies to corporate tax in 2021.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Grandpa, what did you do in the COVID wars?
Pharmaceutical companies in the West and their host governments are very confident today, and some even speak of “post crisis investing”. Certainly, pharma’s scientific credentials have been demonstrated and the public in the UK and the US in particular are seeing the potential end to lockdowns.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Is your board colluding with E(rratic) S(uperficial) G(reenwash)?
ESG is booming, but the industry risks becoming complacent. Fund managers are creating new products that meet markets’ needs more than those of society and the thin ‘layer’ of ESG in core investment processes is not contributing to the much-needed transformation of our economies and societies.
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FeaturesLong-term matters: Stop investing in autocracy
Europeans observing the US ‘near miss’ constitutional crisis have a choice – be spectators or show responsibility
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FeaturesLong term matters: What kind of decarbonisation matters most?
This article was written on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In 2015, the world committed to keep warming below 2°C, meaning decisive annual reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Instead we have had a 7% increase in GHG since 2015 and are on track for about 3°C warming with a high risk of irreversible tipping points.
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FeaturesLong term matters: A time to be hopeful and active?
Jaap van Dam, principal director of investment strategy at PGGM, is right: pension funds need to understand politics. We have two additions. First, the ‘outside-in’ focus – how politics affects portfolios – is a great starting point. But investors cannot stop there, they have considerable influence on politics whether for good or bad.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Addressing autocratic risk
In an email interview, economist and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellow, Emmanuel Saez, confirmed what many investment insiders know: “Markets are notoriously bad at anticipating catastrophes.”
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FeaturesLong term matters: Tales of a chance ESG investor
I didn’t intend to get a permanent job in ‘responsible investment’: my pitch for a consulting contract got misfiled in a recruitment folder and the rest really is history. Having held two good jobs in the sector, at USS and Axa Investment Management, I appreciate the 12 years I’ve spent inside the investment world.
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FeaturesLong term matters: Risk calls for universal investors
I’m looking for a senior executive from a major institutional investor who has “systemic risk” in their job description.
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FeaturesLong Term Matters: Time to apply pressure to banks
Remember how the financial sector lobbied against the Financial Transaction Tax? Imagine it lobbies as hard, but for pandemic recovery programmes to include a carbon price. Totally unrealistic? Exactly my point. Failure to price this externality is why capital has not been reallocated and the finance sector’s slow pace of change are two sides of the same coin.
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FeaturesLong Term Matters: Learning from COVID-19
As the tide of the Second World War was turning in favour of the Allies, there was a ferment of discussion – initially bottom up – about how to build a better world when the war was over. While loved ones were fighting overseas and people at home were struggling with rationing and movement restrictions, some made the time to think about the future. The Bretton Woods Agreement, establishing fixed exchange rates, happened ten months before the war ended in Europe.
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Opinion PiecesLong Term Matters: Investing in an age of pandemics
Pandemics are master classes in managing existential uncertainty. Being overwhelmed is ‘normal’. Here are seven actions that we can take as citizens and investment professionals. The focus is on the US and the UK: their governments are floundering. The unravelling in the US is dangerous for investors. Both the UK and the US are very responsive to the financial sector.
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Opinion PiecesInvesting in an age of pandemics
Pandemics are master classes in managing existential uncertainty. Being overwhelmed is ‘normal’. Here are seven actions that we can take as citizens and investment professionals. The focus is on the US and the UK: their governments are floundering. The unravelling in the US is dangerous for investors. Both the UK and the US are very responsive to the financial sector.
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FeaturesLong term matters: To investors who care about the climate crisis – act before COP26
Rather belatedly, we have a new president of COP26 in the form of Alok Sharma, former UK international development secretary. But this sorry saga seems quite symbolic – we know that we need to do something big but we can’t quite get our act together.
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Opinion PiecesLong-term matters: Financial sector employees can help win the climate change fight
More than a thousand Google employees have signed a public letter calling on the company to take bold action on climate change. They joined employees in other companies such as Amazon and Microsoft who published similar letters, calling their companies to take real action on climate change in response to the climate crisis.
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Opinion PiecesLong Term Matters: Time to shit or get off the (ESG) pot
The ESG project is well beyond its childhood, even its teenage years. PRI has been going for 13 years and SRI activity pre-dated it by a decade.
