(Forbes) For all the high-speed growth and innovation that venture capital is supposed to fuel, the industry itself isn’t structured for quick change. BLCK VC co-founder Sydney Sykes knows it first-hand. Since last summer, firms have reached out to Sykes for advice on changes they can make fast.
(Bloomberg) A small group of investors circulated a letter lambasting Barclays Plc for helping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build two privately owned prisons in Alabama — two years after the bank publicly vowed to cut financing ties with the for-profit industry.
(ESG Investor) Jeff Cohen, Director of Capital Markets Integration at SASB, explains how issuers can use sustainability disclosures to expand their funding options.
(Responsible Investor) Deliveroo: The worst IPO in history, with a side-order of ESG investor boycott. The Gig Economy is under scrutiny for legal and governance sustainability risks.
(GreenBiz) While social, human and natural capital are all critical, financial capital is the one form that systemically fails the companies and leaders working on the most impactful solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals.
(Business & Human Rights Resource Centre) Current due diligence efforts by companies have not been enough to prevent labour exploitation. One reason is that companies overly rely on social audits1 to identify labour abuse in their supply chains, despite well-documented shortcomings. For example, social audits only provide a periodic snapshot of a situation, rely on…
(Politico) To the disappointment of many on the left, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 relief package did not include an increase in the federal minimum wage, dimming the prospect of setting a national wage floor at $15. But there is another step the administration can take to push companies to pay more: disclosure. Read more here.
(SEC) In light of demand for climate change information and questions about whether current disclosures adequately inform investors, public input is requested from investors, registrants, and other market participants on climate change disclosure.
(Medium) Why ESG for VCs now? While nine months ago, many VC funds wouldn’t even have known what ESG might mean for them, there has been a wave of initiatives going through the industry recently.
(Market Watch) Expect a focus on the pitfalls of financial speculation. Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and a longtime critic of Wall Street, will oversee the questioning of several witnesses who will paint the sudden rise and extreme volatility in meme stocks like GameStop Corp as evidence of the need for fundamental…