New Report: Sustainable Investments Grow by 25 percent Worldwide from 2014-16

Globally, sustainable investment assets have increased in value by 25 percent since 2014.

According to the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance’s Global Sustainable Investment Review 2016, “there are now $22.89 trillion of assets being professionally managed under responsible investment strategies.”

The sustainable investment market has grown fastest in Japan during this two-year span, with Australia/New Zealand and Canada also showing particularly rapid growth.

Europe experienced 12 percent growth from 2014-16 and has a total globally sustainable asset base of $12.04 trillion. In the U.S., Impact Economy investing is up 33 percent in the time span to $8.72 trillion. Canada experienced a 49 percent increase to $1.09 billion.

The report defines sustainable investing as “an investment approach that considers environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in portfolio selection and management…. Sustainable investment encompasses the following activities and strategies:

• Negative/exclusionary screening
• Positive/best-in-class screening
• Norms-based screening
• Integration of ESG factors
• Sustainability themed investing
• Impact/community investing and
• Corporate engagement and shareholder action.”

Ikea Wins Design Award For Refugee Shelter

It's understood that one of the keys to retail giant Ikea's success is how efficient it is at packaging. Massive pieces of furniture fit into the smallest boxes possible, making them easy to transport from manufacturer to store to home. 

Ikea won recognition this week for putting that same thinking toward the plight of refugees. The Design Museum of London awarded Ikea its Beazley Design of the Year for a flat-pack shelter created to provide refugees with safe, easily transportable housing. Ikea developed the shelter in collaboration with the United Nations. This CNN article has the full story.   

Washington Post Spotlights Womble Carlyle Client Union Kitchen Grocery

The corner store is a staple of the urban landscape. But Union Kitchen Grocery founders Jonas Singer and Cullen Gilchrist think the corner store should offer healthier fare than just chips and candy bars.

So on May 4^th, Singer and Gilchrist will open Union Kitchen Grocery at 538 Third St. NE in Washington, D.C. Union Kitchen will carry fresh produce and local products, giving neighborhood residents more and healthier food choices. The store grew out of the Union Kitchen food incubator focused on growing food businesses by providing members with the kitchen, catering opportunities, distribution services, access to partnered businesses, discounted vendors, marketing, and facility maintenance.

The Washington Post recently profiled Union Kitchen, and Singer and Gilchrist’s plans to expand the concept to other D.C. neighborhoods. Womble Carlyle’s Impact Economy Team is working with Union Kitchen to help the company achieve its business and social goals.

Jobs Above Replacement: Womble Carlyle’s Mark Newberg Introduces Sabermetrics-Inspired Approach to Economic Development with the Huffington Post

During the past decade, sabermetrics—the science of advanced statistical analysis—has revolutionized how Major League Baseball organizations build their teams. Chief among these new statistics is WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, which calculates how many wins a player delivers to his team compared to a baseline replacement player.

Womble Carlyle Director of Impact Strategies Mark Newberg asks the question, “What if the same approach could be applied to economic development?” in the Huffington Post. Newberg theorizes that a statistical approach, which he calls the Jobs Above Replacement equation, could be a new, invaluable way to look at job creation.

In Newberg’s approach, economic development officials would calculate how many jobs a project would create, giving additional weight to jobs with good benefits and pay. Other factors, such as how fast the new jobs would be created, the cost per job and how many existing jobs a project saves, would be taken into account. Newberg says the project’s total job growth would need to be measured against a hypothetical baseline of how many jobs would be created if the region or company just remained on its current course.

Click here to read the full article in the Huffington Post.

Mark Newberg is Director of Impact Strategies for Womble Carlyle, where he is helping launch an Impact Economy practice and develop an integrated Impact Team that is dedicated to supporting the growth of businesses and entrepreneurs in the Impact Economy.  Newberg also serves as the Managing Director of Impact Investment Strategies for 5 Stone Green Capital.

Morgan Stanley On Investing In Sustainability...

Lower volatility, competitive returns and the potential to make a positive change in the world. A new report by Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing finds that socially conscious investors might benefit financially from their focus on social or environmental factors.

The report surveyed 10,000 equity mutual funds over the last seven years that focus on sustainable investing approaches. Researchers found these mutual funds, as a group, tended to meet or exceed the median returns of their traditional counterparts. The findings are significant because they highlight the depth, breadth, and quality of sustainable investing options in the public markets .

Mark Newberg is the Director of Impact Strategies for Womble Carlyle and he believes this new study reflects significant advancement within the Impact Economy.

“This report shows the continuation of a trend we've seen in recent years, as the options for quality impact investment expand, and the analytic rationale for impact in corporate decision-making has become increasingly compelling” he said.

Impact Blog - The Launch and the Half-Full Glass

Authored by Pam Rothenberg

After months of investigation, learning, networking and analysis (lawyers never do anything simply), I am excited to announce that we recently established a new practice at our firm focused on the Impact Economy.  With this inaugural post, we are launching our Womble Carlyle Has Impact Blog. 

The Impact Economy is a new force enabling businesses to both generate profit and achieve social benefit – where market-driven solutions can sometimes be even more effective than philanthropy in addressing certain social problems.  The Impact Economy also is where the private, public and philanthropic sectors are coming together to collaborate in new creative ways to address overwhelming and seemingly insoluble local, national and global societal problems.

For the Impact Economy to reach its greatest potential, it requires support from many different segments of the business community, including the legal profession.  Our hypothesis in establishing this practice (á la The Lean Startup) is that businesses operating in Impact will be more effective when they work with lawyers that “get” Impact – lawyers who are both credentialed and whose hearts are in the game.  (We invite you to help us validate this assumption.)

With this in mind, we have assembled a cohort of our dedicated attorneys (who have collective experience in virtually all of the sectors of Impact) into an Impact team (I-Team) that is using an Impact lens to customize offerings to address the unique needs and objectives of businesses striving for Impact.  Check out our new video:

Why Impact at Womble Carlyle?  (Yes, Simon Sinek, we agree that you must “start with why.”)  Let me try to explain with this story.

Recently, Mia, my ten-year-old, and youngest, daughter, asked me one of those challenging kid questions. The kind that requires you to pause and take care in responding because of the power your answer can yield.  “Mom, what does it mean when people ask if your glass is half-full or half-empty?”  As many possible responses ran through my head, I gathered myself to answer.

First, I asked Mia to envision her life as though it were a canvas that was half-finished yet filled with limitless possibilities.  “You have endless supplies to paint the rest of your life picture any way you choose.  Does that fill your head with ideas? Do you feel powerful? Can you paint an awesome picture?”  Next, I asked her how she would feel if her “life canvas” was half-finished but that she had no supplies to complete it – as though she had to operate in a deficit mode and without opportunities or energy.  “Is your spirit lifted?  Do you feel creative, positive and in control?”  I concluded with my view that people who have a “glass is half-full” approach are more confident about the future.  They believe, even when they face obstacles and experience losses (as everyone does), that they have the power, resources and spirit to surmount them.  “So always do your best to visualize that your glass (and believe that your life) is half-full.”

Later as I pondered this conversation, I reminded myself that the points I conveyed to Mia are equally relevant for me despite the years and life experiences that separate us.  No doubt, I want all three of my daughters to have faith in the possibilities – to believe they have power, strength and personal efficacy.  So, why do I have trouble maintaining that same perspective for myself?  How do we, as adults, keep the faith that the glass we hold is half-full? Sustaining a positive outlook becomes even more difficult when you consider these queries in the context of today’s ongoing economic and societal challenges.  How do we sustain our convictions that we can leverage resources, maximize opportunities and creatively take action to help ourselves and others solve problems and overcome huge challenges?  

Enter the Impact Economy. I sincerely believe that some of the answers to these questions can be found within the Impact-focused paradigm shift we are now experiencing.  When I think about the possibilities now emerging by virtue of this new Impact Economy, I feel that the world is shifting on its axis and transforming from a glass that is “half-empty” to one that is “half-full.”  The Impact Economy amazes me, invigorates me and fills me with hope.  And these feelings are shared by many of my colleagues at our firm.  We are genuinely compelled to be a part of this growing phenomenon.  We are passionate about using our legal expertise to help solve endemic social problems and to champion our clients that are tenaciously striving to achieve these outcomes.  And, by doing so, we are “filling our glasses.”  This is our “why.”

In this Womble Carlyle Has Impact Blog, we plan to showcase the pioneering businesses, philanthropists, policy-makers, and individuals that are leading the way in Impact and to explore in detail the deal structures, capital sources and tools they are using to do so.  We look forward to joining with you to help foster the growth of the Impact Economy.