Review “…makes a strong business case for taking environmental and social considerations into account in the investment process… “ Accounting Today “…clearly an important book, well presented, and very well written..The book is a banquet of fresh ideas and optimistic opportunities…” Inland Empire Business Journal
Book Description For business and investors, there’s no doubt about it: The smart money is going green…and the growing movement toward ecolog…
Buy Investing in a Sustainable World: Why GREEN Is the New Color of Money on Wall Street at Amazon
I thoroughly enjoyed Investing in a Sustainable World. Right from the Acknowledgements, I knew I was in for a treat. The book does a great job making the argument for sustainable investing, juxtaposing it to SRI, demonstrating its overarching merits, deconstructing the standard objections, and demolishing the long-held theories that support these objections. It makes extensive use of case studies and examples, many of which are new even to experienced readers in this space. Chapter 3 is especially informative in that examines the disjunctive approach to sustainability manifest by such premier investment organization as The World Bank, the Yale endowment, and the State of Connecticut. No reason to pull any punches when the evidence is clear. If this book does not move investors to act then I fear we will be wallowing in the mediocrity of myopic investment strategies and returns for much longer than 10 years.
Well before Al Gore became its poster boy, Matthew Kiernan, a pioneer and a visionary, saw early on the outlines of a new sustainability investment paradigm and has for twenty years pursued his goal to “re-engineer the DNA of capitalism”. This book is not only a thorough introduction to the case for incorporating extra-financial environmental, social, and governance data into investment decisions, it is also a primer on sustainable investing. Thus, it can be read by specialists and novices alike. It is not a “how-to” guide to investing, but lays out a comprehensive road map showing why a new investment philosophy is urgently needed. Briefly, traditional methods of measuring company performance using financial data are inadequate and do not paint the full picture of a company’s potential performance. Financial data are necessarily lagging indicators that form the basis for incomplete speculation about future earning potential. In an interdependent world. however, companies face a broad range of challenges with new cross-border environmental regulations, new social challenges from stakeholders, and a web of complex governance issues. Kiernan argues that the impact of all of these factors should be part of the assessment of any company, and furnishes the methodology and the reasoning behind such assessments. His company, Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, provides world-class research based on this methodology. More and more, the so-called “mainstream” investment world is coming around to his views. The book is written in a lively style that engages the reader, and makes a strong case, based on plenty of examples, for a sustainable investment revolution. Some revolutions are incremental, but Kiernan in this book shows how the framework is now in place for a true change in the way we assess corporate performance and invest responsibly using positive rather than negative screens.