Network for Sustainable Financial Markets

“Given the near universal desire for charismatic leadership and the ideological obsession with shareholder value maximization, we shouldn’t be too surprised that the normal corporate governance structures and processes (e.g., Board oversight of CEO, Investor oversight of Board) have been pretty ineffective in containing executive failure. Arguably, they have encouraged it.” —Raj Thamotheram I would go further and say [...]

Modern portfolio theory and practice are failing institutional investors at a time when their depressed funding levels and high covenant risks require smarter ways of investing, according to a paper by NSFM participant Professor Amin Rajan. In The Death of Common Sense: How elegant theories contributed to the 2008 market collapse, Professor Rajan examines modern portfolio [...]

22 May, 2012 – A proposal to create Renewable Energy Covered Bonds to leverage private-sector investment into the low-carbon economy was released by the Climate Bonds Initiative.  The €2.5 trillion covered bonds market provides for a unique dual recourse structure that offers investors a high degree of security. “The current financial crisis has forced banks to cut back on [...]

Rebuild the pillars of 1930s Wall Street – banks should be forced to disclose important financial information and there should be a robust anti-fraud regime, writes NSFM participant Frank Partnoy in an article in the Financial Times. **** Will Oulton, Head of Responsible Investment EMEA, Mercer, and NSFM participant has edited Investment Opportunities for a [...]

The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) has released its governance best practices for public pension fund officials, citing Keith Johnson and Frank Jan de Graaf’s 2009 paper: Modernizing Pension Fund Legal Standards for the Twenty-First Century.  With more than 550 US and Canadian public pension fund members managing $3 trillion in assets, [...]