ESG Currents Bloomberg

The New York State Insurance Fund (NYSIF) is working to reach net-zero carbon emissions in its investment portfolio by 2040. To achieve this goal, NYSIF focuses on four tenants: internal and external engagement, investment and divestment. In this episode of ESG Currents, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Kane and Shaheen Contractor talk with Rajith Sebastian, Head of ESG and Sustainable Investing for NYSIF about the fund’s approach to net zero, minimizing risk and maximizing impact, the need for more intentionally impactful and evidence-based investment products and more.This episode was recorded on April 3. 
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As ESG has shifted from a niche investment strategy to the mainstream, it has become a hot-button political issue among top-level state and national officials. That includes laws banning ESG on one side of the aisle and mandating exclusionary screens on the other, and the trend may accelerate heading into the US elections. On this week’s episode of ESG Currents, BI Senior ESG Analyst Rob Du Boff is joined by Ropes & Gray partners Michael Littenberg, Josh Lichtenstein and Rob Skinner, who have extensive experience representing corporate and asset-management clients facing legal, compliance and regulatory issues around ESG. This episode was recorded on April 10.
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Climate opportunities extend beyond clean-energy fuels and into a broad diffusion of business models, including areas such as efficiency and infrastructure. Join Senior BI analysts Shaheen Contractor and Andrew Stevenson as they speak with Sarah Wilson, managing director and head of climate strategy at Nuveen, to discuss the state of play in ESG asset gathering, strategies that are gaining steam and datasets to help portfolio managers make better ESG-related investment decisions.

This episode was recorded on April 2.
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Engagement plays an important role for managers to ensure the companies they invest in are managing ESG factors to maximize long-term value. But what happens when this engagement just doesn’t cut it? When the carrot doesn’t work, sometimes you need the stick. On this episode of ESG Currents, BI Senior ESG Analyst Rob Du Boff chats with NYS Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. They discuss the recent announcement that the New York State Common Retirement Fund, one of the largest public pensions in the US, will restrict investment in eight oil and gas companies it deemed not ready for the carbon transition, including Exxon Mobil. This episode was recorded on March 26.
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About 50% of global GDP is at least moderately dependent on nature, according to the World Bank. Increasing recognition of this dependency has fueled new biodiversity-related disclosure frameworks, regulations, and investor action. In this episode of ESG Currents, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Kane and Melanie Rua are joined by David Craig, co-chair of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) to discuss how climate and biodiversity are interrelated, how the TNFD framework fits in with other disclosure guidelines, hopes for COP 16 in Colombia, why nature risk is financial risk, and much more.

This episode was recorded on Mar. 18. 
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Nearly 80% of the world’s 150 top CO2-emitting companies have stated net-zero ambitions for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2050 or sooner, according to Climate Action 100+’s recent Net Zero Company Benchmark 2.0 report. However, the same study finds only 24% of companies assessed have short-term targets aligned with a 1.5-degree Celsius trajectory. On this episode of the ESG Currents podcast, Francois Humbert, Climate Action 100+’s (CA 100+) global investor representative and current Steering Committee Chair, joins Eric Kane, Bloomberg Intelligence’s director of ESG research, to discuss how the CA100+ has influenced company progress and investor behavior, and why we need to move to actions from words.

This conversation was recorded on Nov. 23, 2023. 
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