World Radio Switzerland
http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/switzerland/gore-teams-with-swiss-bank-touts-green-investment-.shtml?10461Gore teams with Swiss bank, touts 'green' investment fund
Al Gore says investors should be eyeing sustainable companies. The former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Laureate was at Geneva Airport on Tuesday promoting his $5 billion asset management company. Generation Management invests in companies that it says are good for the environment—and a Swiss private bank its biggest investor. World Radio Switzerland’s Alex Helmick was there.
Al Gore has been on the “save the environment” campaign for decades, even winning an academy award for An Inconvenient Truth.
Now he is co-heading an asset management group that is investing in environmentally friendly companies.
AL GORE: We do not serve the role at Generation buying some company’s stock in order to try to persuade them to do something that they are not going to do otherwise our principle objective is to make the best return for our clients. And to do so in a way that uses sustainability as a key factor in earning that best return.
Gore has convinced Theirry Lombard, the head of the private bank: Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch and Cie. It is one of the oldest and largest private banks is Switzerland.
Lombard is Generation’s biggest investor with more than 300 million CHF dedicated to Gore’s company.
THEIRRY LOMBARD: This partnership is about our future and a belief that finance has a role to play in our common future.
Officials with generation won’t say who else is investing, but did say there were 30-to-40 institutional investors with about half of all investments coming from Europe.
It is less clear what percentage the company takes from the profits. An official with Generation says the company’s profits are based on long term performance fees.
The type of companies the fund invests in might not be what you think. They are not restricting investment to just overtly ‘green’ companies but rather companies they say have the right environmental attitude.
Mark Mills is the director of Generation.
MARK MILLS: This is what we call a diversified global equity strategy: 30-to-50 businesses. So it is not a thematic type of business. We want to show that sustainability matters broadly to business so this is a broad diversified product.
Officials with Generation say their fund is a long term investment into the future. The hope, they say, is to get the investment world and its major players on with the idea that sustainability can be profitable.
Alex Helmick, World Radio Switzerland.