Responsible Investing: Shareholder Value and Shareholders' Values
Thursday, October 16th
7:30 p.m
Location: Loeb B149, Carleton University
Speaker: Tessa Hebb
Director of the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation at Carleton University, Senior Research Associate at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. She was Senior Research Associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School through June 2008.
Abstract:
Pension funds are not the new moral conscience of the twenty-first century, but they are significant owners of today’s corporations. Because pension funds have to pay out benefits over many decades, they are increasingly concerned about the long-term value of the stocks they hold in their portfolios. Risks posed by climate change can have a huge impact on future returns. To lower the risks associated with an uncertain future, pension funds are engaging corporations and using their influence to raise the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards of companies. Tessa Hebb examines the ability of pension funds, now the largest single driver of financial markets around the world, to use their ownership position to change corporate practices for the sake of the bottom line and, perhaps, change the world for the better in the process.
