Catherine Ann Marshall is principal consultant at RealAlts Inc. which focuses on climate change consulting for institutional real estate and other real assets investors. These are the views of the author and not necessarily those of Canadian Investment Review.
In case you missed it, a recent legal opinion by pension lawyer Randy Bauslaugh suggested plan sponsors might be personally liable for failing to consider risks posed by climate change in the institutional investment decision-making process. Bauslaugh’s paper connected the dots between the current evidence on the materiality and urgency of the financial implications of climate change and the recent reflection of this […]
A lawsuit settlement on the other side of the world is reverberating around the globe as it increases the environmental, social and governance standards for a US$41 billion pension fund and potentially encourages similar legal action elsewhere. The lawsuit, filed against the Australian Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, known as REST, by one of its members, […]
Meeting a deadline in the midst of a pandemic seems like a good test of corporate resiliency and, according to a recent survey of Canadian Principles for Responsible Investment signatories that I conducted on behalf of my consulting firm Real Alts, the majority of respondents likely passed. The survey found that almost 80 per cent […]
There is nothing like a deadline to focus the mind. Asset owners and managers who are signatories of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investments have just five weeks left to complete their annual report on their environmental, social and governance metrics, with the filing deadline being March 31. The challenge in the 2020 report […]
Have you ever noticed that the language of sustainable investment is rife with acronyms? In my opinion, 2020 will see some of the worst tongue-twisters become popularized parlance. Yet an increase in investors learning these bad alphabet jumbles will be a good thing as it will reflect increasing consensus on what’s important in the rapidly […]