21st Century Investing Quotes

“Government regulation can create a level playing field on which companies can compete when it comes to issues such as setting a minimum wage, enforcing current labor laws, and closing tax loopholes.”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

“And ultimately, a growing gap between the haves and have-nots erodes trust in institutions—including governments—that is crucial to the stability of our global economy and financial system.”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

“For example, Aviva Investors (discussed further in chapter 5) assesses potential external managers based on their ESG integration capacity, including their engagement efforts. It maintains a “buy list” of managers that pass its various criteria for its portfolio managers to choose from. It also surveys asset managers on their ESG practices every two years. It does so in part “to raise awareness and enhance [its] understanding of best practice regarding ESG integration in the industry.”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

“Although a systemic approach to engagement is a strategy primarily employed by institutional investors—the larger the investor, the greater the influence—individual investors can also vote their proxies, write to companies, and urge their managers to take an active role in engagement on social and environmental issues.”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

“Prudential has learned from its long-term investment in Newark that once an investor chooses a specific issue to dedicate itself to, it can systematically target investments toward specific social and environmental solutions through a program of interrelated and interconnected investments. (See chapter 3 for details on this locally targeted initiative.)”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change

“The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) provides one example of what leveraging public equities at a system level looks like in practice. It has determined that climate change is a systemic risk and developed a multiyear, multi-asset-class, internally managed Low-Carbon Index (LCI) for passive equity management. Launched in 2017 with a $2.5 billion commitment, the LCI is made up of stocks in all industries in all markets (US, developed, and emerging) around the world. CalSTRS’s goal is for these holdings to have reduced carbon emissions and reserves in each market by between 61 percent and 93 percent in the coming years.4 Since passive index funds hold hundreds, if not thousands, of stocks across all industries, the CalSTRS index will paint a picture of what the future should look like in all companies around the world, in effect setting a benchmark and model for the environmental performance of large corporations on climate change.”
― William Burckart, 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change