Earlier this week, Paris-based banking giant Societe Generale announced the launch of its first socially responsible investment vehicle. What’s interesting about this particular investment is that SocGen plans to donate 100% of their management fees to charity. The exchange traded note or ETN will trade on the London Stock Exchange and will invest in …
As the tragedy in Fukushima continues to unfold, and the world watches helplessly, hoping for the safety of the Japanese people, a debate over the viability of nuclear power as a safe energy source has come to the fore, particularly in energy policy circles. Many environmentalists have long supported nuclear power as an efficient, low-carbon …
There’s a spate of coverage for the 100 year anniversary of the fire at New York’s Triangle shirtwaist factory. The tragedy led to the death of 146 workers and a national discussion about workplace safety rules and labor rights. Various news organizations have coverage, some of the more interesting articles are: WSJ: 100 years after Triangle …
We held a webinar earlier this month on municipal bonds. We provided a basic overview of the municipal bond market and discussed recent events. We’ve now posted a replay on youtube, the links are below:
We always recommend national portfolios when managing a substantial allocation to municipal bonds. Clients often ask about losing the state tax income benefits by buying out of state municipal bonds. Our answer has always been that we believe it is crucial to control geographic risk and concentration, particularly since these can be idiosyncratic, tail-event type …
We’ve been fielding client questions about IRA contributions recently and thought a blog post would be in order. Here are the top five things many people aren’t aware of when it comes to IRAs: Most people can make an IRA contribution for tax-year 2010 up till their tax-filing deadline (April 18 in most cases), and …
Earlier this week, Ceres released a report detailing the climate and energy related shareholder resolutions due to be filed by SRI investors during the 2011 proxy season. The number of resolutions filed against electric power and energy companies is 66, which is a record and a 50 percent increase over the 44 resolutions filed …
Once a year, publicly traded companies across America hold annual meetings for their shareholders. The purpose of these meetings is to elect board members, allow management to make presentations on growth outlook and attend to other business that requires shareholder approval. These meetings, while often either dull town-hall type affairs or overblown media events (depending …
One area of the financial markets most impacted by recent events in the Middle East and North Africa is the price of crude oil. Since the majority of global crude reserves are concentrated in this part of the world, political unrest or disruption to production can often send prices soaring. While the unrest was originally …
We’ve been thinking about the potential for job creation in the current crew of technology companies, spurred along by some despondent Op-Eds. Felix Salmon wrote earlier this week: Dorian Taylor sent me a thought-provoking email this morning which said that one of the reasons we’re seeing fewer companies tap the equity capital markets is that we’re …
Tax Free Municipal Bonds: Are They The Right Investment For You? The past few months have been very eventful for the municipal bond market: the Bush era tax cuts have been extended, municipal governments are proposing massive budgets cuts, protests have broken out in states like Wisconsin and certain commentators have predicted widespread default. This …
The National Stock Exchange recently announced that assets invested in ETFs surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in December 2010. This is more than triple the amount invested in 2005 ($311.3 billion). And while there were 221 ETFs available to investors in 2005, in December 2010 there were 1,099, a nearly five-fold …
Pop open the hood of a typical socially responsible mutual fund and it might surprise you what you find. Often SRI funds, particularly those that invest in the large cap equity space, will hold stock in companies or industries that some SRI investors may find questionable: Oil companies, Too-Big-To-Fail banks and Pharmaceutical companies are all …
AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, announced the creation of 1,653 LEED-certified housing units and approximately 4,100 union construction jobs through investments by their Housing Investment Trust (HIT), a fixed-income investment company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). To date, HIT has committed $274 million to eleven LEED-certified construction …
Lou was quoted in the Business News Daily article titled 5 Things to Consider Before Handing Over Your Company