A handful of snippets for the sustainable investor.
Societe Generale – a large French multinational investment bank – have explicitly modelled sustainability criteria into their assessments of the stocks of European insurance companies. It is weighted towards environmental (as opposed to social and governance) factors, and particularly to coal. Axa, whose CEO is a big fan of climate-friendliness, and Swiss Re scored the best. AIG and Travelers scored the worst. This is important because if insurers refuse to underwrite environmentally unfriendly activities of businesses, then those business will either have to take on the risk of their activities themselves or cease the activity.
Wells Fargo – a major American bank – announced investments in 6 black-owned ‘minority depository institutions’, as part of a pledge from last year to invest $50m dollars into black-owned banks. Those involved say that the investments will help to expand lending and deposit-taking capacity, because the investments will be in the form of equity capital.
Last year the US reached the milestone of generating 10% of its electricity using solar and wind power. In 2008, the proportion was 1% and in 1990 it was 0.1%, so the momentum is strong.
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