Responsible capitalism: data challenge

In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to chief executive of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Janine Guillot, about stakeholder capitalism and the role investors can play in shifting the dial. We discuss the value SASB can play as a tool for decision making and how stakeholder issues can impact performance. SASB standards identify the issues most likely to impact financial performance in 77 industries.

Guillot says the key lever to help re-establish trust between business and society is that companies measure, manage, and reward environmental and social issues the same way they measure, manage, disclosure and reward on financial issues.

What is the Fiduciary Investors series?
The COVID-19 global health and economic crisis has highlighted the need for leadership and capital to be urgently targeted towards the vulnerabilities in the global economy.
Through conversations with academics and asset owners, the Fiduciary Investors Podcast Series is a forward looking examination of the changing dynamics in the global economy, what a sustainable recovery looks like and how investors are positioning their portfolios.

The much-loved events, the Fiduciary Investors Symposiums, act as an advocate for fiduciary capitalism and the power of asset owners to change the nature of the investment industry, including addressing principal/agent and fee problems, stabilising financial markets, and directing capital for the betterment of society and the environment. Like the event series, the podcast series, tackles the challenges long-term investors face in an environment of disruption,  and asks investors to think differently about how they make decisions and allocate capital.

About Janine Guillot
Janine Guillot is the chief executive at SASB. She previously held the role of director of capital markets policy and outreach at SASB, where she initially led outreach to investors and created SASB’s investor advisory group of leading asset owners and asset managers calling for market standards for ESG disclosure
Guillot had more than 25 years of experience in operating, strategy, risk management and finance roles in financial services. She served as chief operating investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). She also oversaw the CalPERS corporate governance program, including integration of sustainability and governance factors into investment decision-making. She has held senior leadership positions at Barclays Global Investors, Bank of America and Incapture LP. At Barclays Global Investors, she served as chief operating officer for BGI’s European and global fixed income businesses.
She serves on the senior advisory board at the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and on the Advisory Board of Blockchain Coinvestors.

Sponsored Content

About Amanda White
Amanda White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. In addition to being the editor of Top1000funds.com, she is responsible for directing the global bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts.  She holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Masters of Art in Journalism and has been an investment journalist for more than 25 years. She is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

 

Recommended reading

Against the gods, the remarkable story of risk

Principles for Purposeful Business

Behind Blackrock’s climate pledge

Leave a Comment

Why Asian equities’ growth will outlast the AI-driven semiconductor cycle

Why Asian equities’ growth will outlast the AI-driven semiconductor cycle

In the latest episode of the Fiduciary Investors Series, Liao spoke with Top1000funds.com Asia Pacific correspondent Darcy Song on why the convergence of innovation, demographics and improving shareholder returns makes Asian equities an increasingly compelling diversification trade for asset owners navigating a geopolitically fractured world.

Sort content by

Railpen’s new investment chief on transformation, governance and culture

Michelle Ostermann, managing director of investments at Railpen which manages £30 billion in assets for the Railways Pension Schemes in the UK, discusses the pension fund's continued evolution.

COVID-19 and the role of sustainability

This conversation with Joel Pohin, director of the portfolio management division, Caisse des Depots looks at how the fund is positioning the portfolio during this time of uncertainty and the role of sustainability in the short and long term.

Is Europe in trouble?

In this Fiduciary Investors series podcast Amanda White talks to Iain Begg, Professsorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, about the economic and social turmoil of COVID-19 and the robustness of the EU to deal with this economically.

Alleviating global poverty: the role of the investor

Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and current Nobel Prize winner in Economics discusses the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on developing countries, and the role that investors can play in alleviating poverty.

The future of the corporation

In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to Henry Richards, who is the project lead on the Future of the Corporation at the British Academy. The discussion is part of our exploration of purposeful companies and the premise that we need to redefine business in the 21st century to build trust between corporations, investors and society.

CalPERS: Leverage, liquidity, inflation

In this Fiduciary Investors series podcast Amanda White talks to Ben Meng, chief investment officer of CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the United States. Meng, who oversees an investment office of nearly 400 employees and manages investment portfolios of roughly $400 billion, talks about the fund’s plan to achieve its 7 per return target - including the use of leverage – the liquidity management of the fund and how it could deploy capital during the crisis, and the inflation.