A disappointing roadshow lunch

In 2016, I attended a roadshow lunch for an upcoming initial public offering (IPO).  This was of course in the “good old days” before the pandemic.  It was a biggish launch, so maybe 100 of us crammed into a room in a grand West London hotel.

As we juggled laptops with dinnerplates, the CEO stepped up to the lectern.  He was leading a global business with over £1bn in revenues and over 9,000 employees.  The first thing he wanted to talk to his potential investors about?  The company’s clever tax structuring. Read more …

Much ink has been spilt announcing net-zero carbon (NZC) targets over the past few months, with WHEB no doubt contributing more than our fair share. A recent survey of UK businesses, for example, found that 52% of respondents worked for businesses that had already set a NZC target.[1] A proportion of these announcements will doubtless amount to rather little. Greenpeace believes that we are currently living in ‘a golden age of greenwash’.[2] Certainly, some companies have been more focused on setting ‘aims’ rather than ‘commitments’ and have been pilloried by NGOs and investors alike.[3] Read more …

The WHEB investment strategy has evolved considerably over the past fifteen years. But the core has always been quite simple. We invest in companies that provide solutions to sustainability challenges.  The companies’ products and services are good for society or the environment, and because of that, they have the potential to grow profits and generate strong investment returns. Read more …

Love them, or hate them, Greenpeace know how to produce a good campaign video. Personally, I love them, but even for me their ‘kitkat video’ was quite hard to watch.[i] Their latest offering stars the British Prime Minister and illustrates the huge challenge in reducing plastic waste.[ii] Read more …

Deliveroo has been dubbed London’s ‘worst IPO in history’ after its shares fell 26% in the first day of trading, which was the last day in March.  Some say it was just bad timing as investors don’t like stocks that IPO at the end of the quarter. Read more …

In 2007, McKinsey & Co. the consulting firm, published an article entitled ‘A cost curve for greenhouse gas reduction’^[1]. In it the authors ranked technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions according to the cost of abating one ton of carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO₂e). The stand-out technology – by some margin – was building insulation. Read more …

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited to an event hosted by the Rothschild Foundation at the family’s estate at Waddesdon Manor^[1]. Wim Leereveld, the founder of the Access to Medicine Foundation, was taking questions from assembled guests. He was asked about the growing prevalence of ‘greenwashing^[2]’ in the market for financial products and what should be done about it. His response was rather unexpected. He said – and I am paraphrasing – that he was reasonably relaxed about it. He saw it as evidence that there was real underlying demand for sustainable financial products. The market, he anticipated would quickly evolve to unmask any greenwashing. Read more …

The global response to COVID-19 has been nothing short of a technological revolution in the healthcare sector. My colleague Ty Lee wrote recently about developments in diagnostics, therapy and vaccination technologies[1]. Perhaps most remarkable has been the speed with which innovations in these technologies have come about, pointing to the scale of human ingenuity. Read more …

On 10 January 2020, the first novel coronavirus genome sequence was made public. This accomplishment effectively fired the starting gun in the race to find a treatment for COVID-19. Three decades ago, it took 13 years to sequence the human genome.[1] The latest machines will do it in just over an hour[2]. Advances in genome sequencing and in other healthcare technologies have played a critical role in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The most critical healthcare technologies fall into three broad categories: diagnostics, therapy and vaccination. Read more …

Very few will mourn the passing of 2020. But those hoping for a calmer new year were swiftly disappointed.

2021 was only six days old when the US Capitol was stormed by a motley crew of extremists and fantasists. This perplexing event met its financial markets equivalent in the very same month. Gamestop shares soared 1,745% in the first 17 trading days of the year. Read more …