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Image by John Ritter Image by John Ritter An estimated $30 trillion in assets worldwide—including half of all professionally managed assets in...
- January 2021
- Case
Rio Tinto Aluminum: Can Purpose Lead to Profit?
By: David Fubini and Agastya Muthanna
This case describes the tradeoffs Rio Tinto faces as it considers investments to ensure environmentally friendly, sustainability produced aluminum with the potential risks of competitive pricing and profit loses.
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Keywords:
Mining Industry
- December 2020
- Case
Urban Company
Urban Company is an India-based market platform that helps customers book home services and at home beauty services. The company differentiated itself by investing heavily in building customer trust. Rather than merely positioning itself as a lead generating...
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- October 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Divesting Harvard's Endowment
By: Daniel Green, Luis M. Viceira and Holly Fetter
By early 2020 Harvard University was facing growing pressure from students, faculty, and alumni to divest its $40 billion endowment of financial stakes in fossil fuel producers. Its previous policy of avoiding the issue was quickly becoming outdated—$21 trillion of...
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- September–October 2020
- Article
Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value
By: George Serafeim
Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Sustainability Management;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg Disclosure;
Esg Disclosure Metrics;
Esg Ratings;
Esg Reporting;
Social Impact;
Impact Measurement;
Social Innovation;
Purpose;
Corporate Purpose;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Strategy;
Social Enterprise;
Society;
Accounting;
investment;
Environmental sustainability;
Climate Change;
Corporate Strategy;
Mission And Purpose;
Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact;
Financial Services Industry;
Chemical Industry;
Technology Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
North America;
Europe;
Japan;
Australia
- July 2020
- Case
Sustainable Investing in Private Markets at TIFF
By: Luis M. Viceira and Victoria Sienczewski
- June 2020
- Teaching Note
Generation Investment Management
By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Sarah Mehta
This teaching note provides guidance for teaching the case “Generation Investment Management” (820-033), which looks at the challenges facing a sustainable investment firm.
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Keywords:
Sustainable Investing;
Socially Responsible Investing;
Long-term Investing;
Esg;
Climate Change;
Environmental sustainability;
Finance;
Equity;
Governance;
Private Equity;
Public Equity;
Financial Markets;
investment;
investment Return;
investment Activism;
investment Funds;
investment Portfolio;
Institutional investing;
Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact;
Financial Services Industry;
United Kingdom;
England;
London
- May 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Ethics;
Geography;
Geopolitical Units;
Finance;
investment;
Markets;
Market Entry And Exit;
Demand And Consumers;
Network Effects;
Media;
Society;
Urban Development;
sustainable Cities;
Technology;
Hardware;
Technology Platform;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Expansion;
Relationships;
Partners And Partnerships;
Capital;
Venture Capital;
Advertising Industry;
Technology Industry;
Media And Broadcasting Industry;
North And Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- 2020
- Article
Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability
By: George Serafeim
Combining corporate sustainability performance scores based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with big data measuring public sentiment about a company’s sustainability performance, I find that the valuation premium paid for companies with strong...
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Keywords:
Sustainability;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Investment Management;
Investment Strategy;
Big Data;
Machine Learning;
Environment;
Environmental sustainability;
Corporate Governance;
Performance;
Asset Pricing;
investment;
Management;
Strategy;
Human Capital;
Public Opinion;
Value
- March 2020 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Generation Investment Management
By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Sarah Mehta
By January 2020, sustainable investment firm Generation Investment Management (Generation), founded in London in 2004, had grown from a shared vision among seven founders to a 90-person firm managing $27 billion in public and private equity. Throughout its history,...
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Keywords:
Sustainable Investing;
Climate Change;
Environmental sustainability;
Finance;
Equity;
Governance;
Private Equity;
Public Equity;
Financial Markets;
investment;
investment Return;
investment Activism;
investment Funds;
investment Portfolio;
Institutional investing;
Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact;
Financial Services Industry;
United Kingdom;
England;
London
- January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit
The case revolves around the actions that Barbara Novick, co-founder and Vice-Chair of Blackrock, and Michelle Edkins, Global Head of Investment Stewardship, would need to take in response to the controversial CEO letters from Laurence (Larry) Fink, Chairman and CEO of...
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Keywords:
Boards Of Directors;
Institutional Investors;
Disclosure;
Transparency;
Corporate Purpose;
Corporate Profits;
Esg;
Esg Disclosure Metrics;
Corporate Sustainability;
Engagement Strategy Of Institutions;
Stewardship Role Of Institutions;
Blackrock;
Corporate Governance;
Governing And Advisory Boards;
Institutional investing;
Accounting;
Corporate Disclosure;
Mission And Purpose;
Profit;
Environmental sustainability;
Climate Change;
Diversity;
Corporate Accountability;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
- January 2020
- Case
SK Group: Social Progress Credits
By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg
SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength...
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Keywords:
Impact;
Impact Investing;
Impact Measurement;
Social Value;
Social Development;
Conglomerates;
Measurement Of Purpose;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Capital Markets;
Innovation;
Environmental Impact;
Collaboration;
Social Enterprise;
Social And Collaborative Networks;
Social Issues;
Measurement And Metrics;
Value Creation;
Cooperation;
Environmental sustainability;
Employment;
Accounting;
Energy Industry;
Telecommunications Industry;
Chemical Industry;
South Korea
- 2019
- Working Paper
Intelligent Design of Inclusive Growth Strategies
By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat
Improving corporate engagement with society, as advocated in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement, should not be viewed as a zero-sum proposition where attention to new stakeholders detracts from delivering shareholder value. Corporate programs for sustainable and...
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- October 16, 2019
- Article
Where ESG Fails
We are entering a new stage of understanding of the linkage between investment performance and social impact. Previous approaches, such as socially responsible investing and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) screening, have obscured the opportunities for...
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- October 2019
- Case
Regtech at HSBC
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and James Weber
Mark Cooke, Global Head of Operational Risk, needed to decide between a traditional regulatory control system and a new regtech system to manage non-financial risks.
Non-financial risks failures such as money laundering and tax evasion had cost HSBC billions of dollars...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Decarbonization Factors
By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Bridget LaPerla, George Serafeim, David Turkington and Hui (Stacie) Wang
In the face of accelerating climate change, investors are making capital allocations seeking to decarbonize portfolios by reducing the carbon emissions of their holdings. To understand the performance of portfolio decarbonization strategies and investor behavior...
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- September 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Pinduoduo
By: Feng Zhu, Krishna G. Palepu, Bonnie Yining Cao and Dawn H. Lau
Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur, Colin Huang, Pinduoduo Inc. (PDD) had become China’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform in history. PDD pioneered a new approach to online shopping that allowed shoppers to share products, invite friends to form shopping teams,...
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- 2019
- White Paper
Impact-Weighted Financial Accounts: The Missing Piece for an Impact Economy
By: George Serafeim, T. Robert Zochowski and Jennifer Downing
Reimagining capitalism is an imperative. We need to create a more inclusive and sustainable form of capitalism that works for every person and the planet. Massive environmental damage, growing income and wealth disparity, stress, and depression within developed...
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- August 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Sustainable Investing at J.P. Morgan Private Bank
By: Sara Fleiss and Luis Viceira
This case features Monica Issar, then Global Head of J.P. Morgan Endowments & Foundations Group in the Private Bank. In just five years, she and J.P. Morgan have grown the Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) business from $5 billion in AUM from primarily family...
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- January 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Should a Pension Fund Try to Change the World? Inside GPIF's Embrace of ESG
In the fall of 2018, Hiro Mizuno, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of GPIF, the Japanese Government Pension Fund, was reflecting on his efforts to integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues into every aspect of GPIF’s portfolio. His efforts ranged...
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- January 2019
- Case
King Abdullah Economic City: Population Drivers and Cash Flow
By: John D. Macomber
CEO of high profile new economic city in Saudi Arabia must decide how to allocate limited investment funds across projects under duress. Issues include understanding core economic drivers; planning infrastructure investment and return; attracting multinationals; and...
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