What are Your Investments Doing Right Now?

Abstract

In the present times of financial crisis and economic turmoil, many people are worried about their investments. A rather straightforward and understandable worry concerns what will happen to the particular investments one currently holds, or those held before the onset of the turmoil, and whether there will be anything left of these once the crisis is over. A more strategic worry, however, is how to invest so to avoid the kind of ethical problems in the future (e.g., the taking of unreasonable financial risks) which generally are thought to, at least partly, have given rise to the crisis. One possibility some investors may be looking at here is the kind of investing which is the topic of this book – so-called ‘ethical’, ‘responsible’ or ‘socially responsible’ investment (SRI). Over the last decade or so, an increasing number of banks and fund companies have launched investment vehicles with an explicit ‘ethical’, ‘social’ or ‘environmental’ profile and these vehicles have indeed attracted a vast amount of investment capital. According to some recent (although probably exaggerated) estimates, the total amount of assets under management with this kind of profile was as much as $2.29 trillion in the US (Social Investment Forum 2006) and €1.03 trillion in Europe (Eurosif 2006) at the end of 2005.