Eric Rice: How Blackrock approaches impact investing in public markets

My guest today is Eric Rice, and in his role as Head of active equities Impact Investing, at Blackrock, he’s working to bring the rigour of impact investing to public markets. Blackrock is the world’s largest fund manager, they have more than $7 trillion of assets under management, so the potential to scale impact is massive. But, there are big questions around whether public companies can be held to account in the same way as private companies, and, whether a fund can maintain impact-with-integrity at such a large scale. Eric didn’t start out in finance, in fact, he was a diplomat. He then shifted to working as an economist for the World bank. He did a PHD at Harvard, and eventually he realised that it was in the world of finance that he could drive the most change. I hope you enjoy this conversation, it’s offers some deep insights into the cutting edge thinking around how to have impact in public markets, but also, I asked Eric about how Larry Fink’s highly influential letters have been translated into action across their range of portfolios and across their investment policies. Please do let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a review or comment on iTunes. Plus, you can find all the show notes on my website, at www.johntreadgold.com Enjoy!