Responsible capitalism: the data challenge

Fiduciary Investors Series

In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to chief executive of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Janine Guillot, about stakeholder capitalism and the role investors can play in shifting the dial. We discuss the value SASB can play as a tool for decision making and how stakeholder issues can impact performance.
Guillot says the key lever to help re-establish trust between business and society is that companies measure, manage, and reward environmental and social issues the same way they measure, manage, disclosure and reward on financial issues.

About Janine Guillot

Janine Guillot is the chief executive at SASB. She previously held the role of director of capital markets policy and outreach at SASB, where she initially led outreach to investors and created SASB’s investor advisory group of leading asset owners and asset managers calling for market standards for ESG disclosure

Guillot had more than 25 years of experience in operating, strategy, risk management and finance roles in financial services. She served as chief operating investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). She also oversaw the CalPERS corporate governance program, including integration of sustainability and governance factors into investment decision-making. She has held senior leadership positions at Barclays Global Investors, Bank of America and Incapture LP. At Barclays Global Investors, she served as chief operating officer for BGI’s European and global fixed income businesses.

She serves on the senior advisory board at the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and on the Advisory Board of Blockchain Coinvestors.

About Amanda White
Amanda White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. In addition to being the editor of Top1000funds.com, she is responsible for directing the global bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Masters of Art in Journalism and has been an investment journalist for more than 25 years. She is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

What is the Fiduciary Investors series?
The COVID-19 global health and economic crisis has highlighted the need for leadership and capital to be urgently targeted towards the vulnerabilities in the global economy.
Through conversations with academics and asset owners, the Fiduciary Investors Podcast Series is a forward looking examination of the changing dynamics in the global economy, what a sustainable recovery looks like and how investors are positioning their portfolios.

The much-loved events, the Fiduciary Investors Symposiums, act as an advocate for fiduciary capitalism and the power of asset owners to change the nature of the investment industry, including addressing principal/agent and fee problems, stabilising financial markets, and directing capital for the betterment of society and the environment. Like the event series, the podcast series, tackles the challenges long-term investors face in an environment of disruption, and asks investors to think differently about how they make decisions and allocate capital.