Sustainability Leaders - podcast cover

Sustainability Leaders

BMO Financial Groupbmo.com
Sustainability is a rapidly evolving field, driven by billions of dollars in global investment. Join hosts Michael Torrance, Jonathan Hackett and others in this podcast series, as we introduce you to the innovative minds and diverse perspectives that are pushing the boundaries in sustainability good practice. With topics ranging from climate change to sustainable finance and green bonds to human rights and responsible investing, we explore the world of corporate sustainability through interviews with corporate practitioners, investors, scholars and the NGO community.
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Episodes

Green Finance in China

China’s enormous growth and development in the last 25 years have presented significant challenges to environmental sustainability. Sustainable finance and the green bond market has emerged as a key pillar of China’s green strategy. There is an estimated $1 trillion annually needed to meet China’s environmental goals and government investment only covers about 15% of that amount. Private sector initiatives will be key to China’s environmental strategy and is driving innovation. On this episode w...

Jan 09, 202046 min

Sustainable Finance is the new normal

Today, we bring you a special episode as part of our partnership with Bloomberg for Sustainable Finance Week - a collection of events around this topic in New York City and Toronto, happening the first week of December. Our guest is Lee Ballin, the Head of Business Development for Sustainability at BloombergNEF - Bloomberg’s primary research group focused on industry-transforming trends and technologies driving a cleaner, more competitive future. Lee and Michael Torrance discuss the collaboratio...

Dec 02, 201926 min

The power of collaboration in ESG investing

Today we’re going to take an inside look at responsible investment, with our friends at BMO Global Asset Management in the UK. Our first guest is Sustainability Leaders host, David Sneyd, Vice President, Analyst, Responsible Investment at BMO GAM. David talks about how a responsible investment team works, and how they engage with their investments. Later in the episode, David will host a conversation with James Coldwell from ShareAction, an NGO in the UK that collaborates with David’s team on a ...

Oct 08, 201950 min

Pricing Climate Risk with Bob Litterman

Today, our guest is Dr. Bob Litterman. An economist, Bob is considered one of the leading authorities on risk management and quantitative trading on Wall Street. He has been studying climate change for a decade, and today he shares not only his insights from managing firm-wide risk but how it applies to climate risk. As a board member of Climate Leadership Council, he breaks down the Baker-Shultz Carbon Dividend Plan, which is now supported by over 3,500 economists, and explains why pricing carb...

Sep 10, 201939 min

World Bank: Mobilizing Capital Markets for Sustainable Finance

One of the world’s largest supranational issuers, with 189 member countries, the World Bank has “established ambitious, but achievable goals to galvanize international and national efforts to end extreme poverty globally within a generation and to promote shared prosperity.” Our guest is Heike Reichelt, the Head of Investor Relations and New Products at the World Bank. We’ll learn about the World Bank’s funding programs, their influential work in sustainable development and how they mobilize cap...

Aug 13, 201932 min

Responsible Investing - Industry Trends and Best Practices from Canada

The field of Responsible Investing is growing at a rapid pace, and to explore all of its implications we turned to two experts. They’ll give us an overview as well as dive into some of the interesting trends and best practices from Responsible Investing in Canada. We’ll talk with Alison Schneider, the Director of Responsible Investing for AIMCO, or Alberta Investment Management Company. AIMCO is a Crown-Corporation that is responsible for the investments of 31 pension, endowment and government f...

Jul 30, 201931 min

Climate Change: Transitions and opportunities

In this episode, Manju Seal sits down with atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe. Katharine is a well-known TED speaker, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014, and a respected scientist studying global warming today. Originally from Canada, she is now a professor and the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. In a wide-ranging interview, they discussed a “just transition” to a low carbon economy, why we need to talk about climate change, and the op...

Jul 02, 201923 min

Sustainability Disclosures: financial reporting with SASB

Today we’re going to learn about a sustainability disclosure framework created by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). Our guest is Matthew Welch, President of SASB. Founded in 2011 to develop and disseminate sustainability accounting standards, SASB created a new approach to measuring and reporting standardized sustainability metrics, tied to financial materiality – rather than stakeholder conceptions of materiality used by other sustainability reporting frameworks. In 2018 SAS...

Jun 11, 201937 min

Green Taxonomy: The EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan

In today’s episode, we'll learn about how the European Union is defining sustainability for investors and business. Our guest is Nathan Fabian, Rapporteur for the Taxonomy Group of the European Union Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. The Taxonomy group is developing a green taxonomy for sustainable finance products that will form part of the EU’s action plan to promote sustainable finance and investment. Nathan is also Chief Responsible Investment Officer at the United Nations Princ...

May 21, 201932 min

Analyzing Climate Risk for Financial Markets

On this episode, we explore climate-related risk and how it is being managed in today’s financial world. We’re joined by John Colas, Partner and Vice Chairman of Oliver Wyman Financial Services Americas. John was part of the team assisting the United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) to develop a framework to assess and disclose climate-related risk factors. This project focused on piloting the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate Re...

May 14, 201932 min

Understanding Green and Sustainable Bonds

Today we’re exploring the world of green bonds and the emerging market of sustainability bonds. Our expert guest is Dan Krieter from the BMO Capital Markets Fixed Income Strategy Group, who will give us a recap of the market from 2018 as well as a look forward for how 2019 will shape out. Listen in as we discuss how this market was developed, what’s in it for the investor, and what to look out for in the year ahead. For full show notes and links mentioned in this episode, visit http://bmo.com/su...

May 07, 201934 min
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