(Pensions & Investments) Asset owners are increasingly putting their weight behind efforts by their current or future general partners to diversify their investment executive ranks. “There has been real change in the last 18 to 24 months, with most asset owners asking venture capital firm executives direct questions at board meetings about diversity and inclusion,”…

(Pensions & Investments) Women are edging their way into the ranks of venture capital executives who can make investments, but the road to getting control of the firm’s checkbook is a long one and often filled with potholes. Over the past two years, the number of female venture capital executives able to make investments —…

(The Guardian) As fossil fuels become more volatile, pensioners may be exposed to greater risk unless their funds divest. In early October, an oil pipeline owned by Amplify Energy spilled into the ocean in southern California. Up to 132,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into the waters off the coast of Orange county, possibly the…

(Responsible Investor) Regulator’s new enforcement division director says that there is ‘nothing new’ in the way it is tackling ESG-related misconduct, referring to 2008 case. Read more here.

(TechCrunch) Google suffered a major defeat in its legal battle with Sonos in August, when a U.S. International Trade Commission judge ruled that Google infringed on five of Sonos’ audio technology patents. If the ruling is upheld, Google could pay hundreds of millions and face a ban on importing everything from Pixel smartphones to Nest…

(Top 1000 Funds) The costs of inaction on climate change are catastrophic. With the last five years the warmest on record, the impact on our planet’s ecosystems is accelerating. To hold back this tide, the next eight years are critical. The IPPC’s ‘report on 1.5C’ indicates that the world needs to cut annual global emissions in…

(Grist) In less than a week, world leaders will convene in Glasgow for the most important climate conference of the year, the United Nations’ COP26. One of the biggest questions of the conference is whether developed countries like the U.S. will finally cough up the rest of the money they promised to poorer nations a…

(Forbes) The Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative (CCLI) has just published “Fiduciary Duties and Climate Change in the United States” by Sarah Barker, Cynthia Williams, and Alex Cooper. This is an extremely important report for reasons I will explain. The CCLI is a UK-based NGO which works with leading academic institutions (e.g., the University of…

(Financial Times) Sustainable investing may be gratifying for wealthy individuals and families, but it is far from simple. A lack of standards in the measurement and reporting of ESG (environmental, social and governance) products and funds can leave investors confused. And when it comes to impact investments, capturing the right data takes time, effort and,…

(Financial Times) Venture capital money is flooding back into clean tech companies a decade after the “mini green bubble” saw private financing for the sector dry up. But John Thornhill argues that the climate tech 2.0 investment boom has better promise than version 1.0. Between 2006 and 2011, VCs spent more than $25bn funding clean…