Skip to main content

Money, Ethics and You: A Heady Cocktail or a Disappointing Brew?

Those of us who save and invest ethically like to think that we are doing our bit to help the environment or encourage sustainable international development. Are we really making a difference or just making ourselves feel better?

Coctails 2 1566814

A chance encounter at RISC (Reading International Solidarity Centre) led to my being invited to give a talk on ethical finance during Reading International Festival. I chose to focus on the fact that investors hope to encourage ethical activities through portfolio choices (the heady cocktail) but may instead find that the retail products in which they invest are not quite what they imagined (the disappointing brew).

The event was well-attended and thanks to the knowledgeable audience, we had a thought-provoking discussion about the ethical use of money, ranging across topics like the relative merits of lending to, and buying shares in ethical companies; fund managers’ fees; CEOs’ stock options and the implications of tax breaks for responsible investing.

It was great to have the chance to speak to a diverse audience which was united in a passion to act responsibly and to encourage business to do the same. My thanks to Zainab Khan for organising the event and to everyone who came along and made it such a stimulating evening.

Published 20 October 2017

You might also like

Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance Summer Program Scholarship 2015

12 February 2015
Do you want an opportunity to visit and study in China for two weeks this Summer?

Congratulations on your A level results!

21 August 2013

The financial crisis - why students should still choose finance

12 February 2009
For those people considering going to university this year at MSc level, this financial crisis will be the first they have experienced. Yet financial crises happen every ten or twenty years. What is different this time is the severity of the crisis ? the likes of which no trader in the City has ever seen before. This article first outlines the causes of the crisis and then asks whether students should steer clear of finance, accounting and economics as subject disciplines and potential careers, until the crisis has receded? I argue that the clear answer is ?no".