Trends Corporate strategy 1/4
Pity the poor investor?
In the fourth part of our ‘As If People Matter’ series, Michael Townsend takes the investor’s perspective, as they too try and make sense of a changing world
“Integrating issues such as climate change into investment analysis is simply common sense.” Al Gore,
Chairman of Generation Investment Management, & Former Vice President of the United States
It has taken four long, arduous years for the US stock market to recover its value after the financial crash of 2008. In the UK the FTSE has yet to fully recuperate. This has not been a good time to be an investor. OK, many still have enough cash and good lifestyles, at a time when many other businesses, people and families have been struggling merely for survival. But investors play an impor- tant part within our capitalist economic machine; they keep the wheels oiled and moving, so that jobs are created, salaries paid, lives can be lived. If they are not functioning in the right way, it is also hard for the rest of us to do so. Investors too are getting to grips with how best to operate within a volatile 21st- century economy.
Questions abound. What does a good investment look like in a resource constrained, rapidly changing, and unpredictable world? What should one invest in: clean tech, renewables, or conventional industries? How certain are we of getting a return? What are the risks? What are the new rules? What is the new normal? It is certainly part of the human condition to believe that our experience of past events provides us with a realistic predictor for future outcomes. But we probably look to our old roadmaps, more in hope, than in true
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