The Responsible Investor Podcast

Increasing geopolitical uncertainty and the USA's decreasing reliability as an ally has triggered a massive boost in global defence spending.

As investment managers and asset owners look to capitalise on the new opportunities, this has led to a wave of fund launches and changes to exclusions policies across the market.

In this episode, senior reporter Dominic Webb talks to deputy editor Elza Holmstedt Pell about the latest developm...

The past six months have been dominated by EU sustainable finance regulatory developments, following the bloc's push to simplify and roll back several of the rules issued under its 2019 Green Deal.

On this episode, we are joined by Helena Viñes Fiestas, commissioner at Spanish regulator CNMV and former chair of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance.

Having worked in sustainable finance for more than a decade, she talks us through ...

The UK's fund labelling regime under the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements and the European Securities and Markets Authority's new guidelines on the use of ESG terms in fund names have have sparked a wave of renaming, mergers, closures and portfolio reshuffling.

On this episode, we are joined by Hortense Bioy, head of sustainable investing research at Morningstar Sustainalytics. Bioy walks us through the most recent regulatory...

ESG shareholder proposals have come under increasing scrutiny over the past few years, with debates focusing around their alleged prescriptiveness and quality. Support for these proposals also fell sharply from the record levels reached in 2021 before stabilising last year at around 20 percent.

Last year also saw ExxonMobil sue Dutch NGO Follow This and Arjuna Capital over a climate resolution. The lawsuit ended with the case being...

It is now a matter of broad consensus that the world will overshoot its 1.5C temperature goal, but that does not mean there is nothing to be optimistic about, according to climate finance expert Jakob Thomä.

He should know a thing or two about this topic. Thomä led the development of the first climate scenario analysis tool at 2 Degrees Investing Initiative and currently leads a think tank which makes predictions about future clima...

It’s been just over one month since the European Commission announced its much-anticipated sustainability Omnibus plans, which would heavily water down the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and EU Taxonomy.

The EU executive wants the changes to be approved and implemented at a very quick pace, and much has already happened since the February announcement.

I...

In recent years, corporates have increasingly been trying to work out how to approach nature reporting.

How has the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) aided firms in their efforts? And what are the initial insights from Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reports regarding how corporates are approaching ESRS E4 Biodiversity and ecosystems?

Stephanie Hime, founder and managing director of sustai...

Asset owners across the UK, Europe and US are sharpening their focus on asset manager stewardship, and an increasing regulatory focus on stewardship outcomes and transition-focused products is leading investors to think harder about how they can demonstrate that their own engagements are having an effect.

Jennifer Walmsley, associate director for corporate engagement at the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), h...

Global investments in renewable energy reached a new record of more than $700 billion in 2024, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But this year has brought uncertainty and challenges on many fronts, perhaps most notably from the new Trump administration.

The good news is that uncertainty is something the sector is used to, says Jérôme Guillet, co-founder of renewables advisory firm Snow, and there are many bright spots.

At ...

Net-zero as a concept is under pressure, and for investors to assess the best path forward, it is crucial to understand how companies and other holdings are managing this – and what efforts they are undertaking to navigate the transition.

This is what the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) has helped investors with since its inception in 2017. Carmen Nuzzo, the executive director of TPI’s academic centre, tells The Responsible Inv...

With big asset managers rushing to exit climate initiatives and ESG opponents taking centre stage in the US, responsible investment is under scrutiny as never before. What does this mean for up-and-coming asset owners with sustainability ambitions?

This is a key question for Dan Mikulskis, CIO of People's Partnership, one of the fastest-growing workplace pension providers in the UK. In this episode, he talks to RI editor Lucy Fitzg...

Three years ago, in the run-up to COP26, financial institutions rushed to sign up to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).

A renewed focus on fiduciary duty, however, combined with concerns about the real-world impact of reducing portfolio emissions, is now prompting asset managers to rethink strategies and methodologies for net zero.

Daisy Streatfeild has seen the issue from both sides of the fence. In 2021, she hel...

After an autumn of devastating floods in Florida, Spain and southern Italy, the need to protect populations from the impacts of climate change has shot up the agenda for policymakers.

Nature can play a crucial role in climate adaptation, from protecting coastlines from rising sea levels to slowing or reducing water run-off upstream of urban centres.

In this episode, veteran investor Eoin Murray talks to RI editor Lucy Fitzgeorge-Pa...

The global UN biodiversity summit delivered on the buzz – and had a huge private sector turnout. The overall outcomes, however, have been widely described as “a mixed bag” on the positive end of the scale, while many called it underwhelming.

But investors did not leave Cali empty handed, with a flurry of announcements on nature transition plans, investment products, collective engagements and many discussions on scaling up private ...

Mining is a notoriously dirty and dangerous business – so much so that it has often been shunned by responsible and risk-averse investors. In recent years, the Brumadinho dam disaster and the Juukan Gorge scandal have provided ample evidence of the environmental and social risks associated with the sector.

Yet it is crucial to the energy transition. According to the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, around 300 new mines wi...

When Responsible Investor talks to investors about transition finance, capital expenditure almost always features.

Folksam’s chief economist Marcus Svedberg told RI earlier this year that studying capex flows is a good indicator of where companies are going, and that ideally “you want to be overwhelmed by how much they are investing in new technologies, technologies of the future”.

And there are some positive signs. For example, so...

Transition finance is the fastest-growing area in sustainable investment. Over the past two years, the amount invested in transition-focused funds in Europe doubled as inflows into traditional ESG funds stalled.

The appeal of transition finance is obvious. It offers sustainability-minded investors access to a broader range of sectors and companies than “pure green” strategies, while at the same time potentially achieving more real-...

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has put simplicity and consumer testing at the centre of its efforts to roll out fund labels to improve transparency of sustainable investment products.

For managers that are in the middle of applying labels to their funds, the process has in many ways proved more challenging than first expected – so far, only two funds have publicly announced that they have secured a label. The FCA has re...

After two years of rising commodity prices, surging energy sector profits and intensifying anti-ESG rhetoric in the US, it is easy to get the impression that investors are losing their appetite for sustainability.

But industry veteran Lee Clements, now head of applied sustainable investment research at FTSE Russell, says reports of the death of ESG investing have been greatly exaggerated.

In this episode, he talks to RI editor Lucy...