18 September 2018 
Karel Thomas, Executive Director
In the week when it was reported that the main Cambridge endownment fund had lost some key staff, it seems like there has been some fossil fuel thrown on the debate about whether to divest. "If you aren’t investing responsibly then you are investing irresponsibly" writes Mark Haefele in an on-trend article in the Financial Times. Last week The Guardian highlighted a new report from Arabella Advisors that claims "funds committed to fossil fuel divestment now total more than $6tn (£4.6tn), with almost 1,000 institutional investors having made the pledge". Colleagues who attended the recent Midlands regional meeting will remember that Sian Ferguson spoke about the Climate Change Collaboration, an initiative of four of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, and the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, and distributed copies of the second annual survey on climate risk by UK fund managers. As Finance Directors and Treasury Managers should be prepared for a discussion about this in your institution, you might be interested in reading how universities in the US are getting on. You might also do a quick Google search of the words "investment returns difficult moral decisions", in whatever order you choose.
