The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #87391   Message #2842622
Posted By: Sawzaw
17-Feb-10 - 11:26 PM
Thread Name: BS: Where's the Global Warming
Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
Generation Investment Management LLP (GIM) is a London-based investment management firm with an investment style that blends traditional equity research with a focus on sustainability factors, including social and environmental responsibility and corporate governance.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is chairman of Generation, and David Blood â€" previously chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management â€" is CEO. The pair has given the company its nickname, "Blood and Gore."

Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the UK.

Generation has built a global research platform to integrate sustainability research into fundamental equity analysis. The firm focuses on the economic, environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities that can materially affect a company's ability to sustain profitability and deliver returns.

The November 2004 press release announcing the launch of the firm included the following quote from Gore:

    I'm delighted to join David Blood in founding this firm. The issue of sustainability has always been a passion of mine. Helping to establish the competitive business advantages of sustainability in an investment context with this exceptional team is a very exciting challenge.

    Transparency, innovation, eco-efficiency, investing in the community, nurturing and motivating employees, managing long-term risks, and embracing long-term opportunities are integral parts of a company's enduring capability to create value. Business leaders who align their business strategy and technical development with sustainability and social accountability will deliver superior long-term results to shareholders.

Generation began investing client money in April 2005, and has offices in London, New York and Sydney. The firm currently employs 36 people. Generation's Advisory Board, convened by Gore, helps set Generation's long-term thematic research agenda into global sustainability and renewable energy issues. Past areas of focus have included climate change, poverty and development, ecosystem services and biodiversity, water scarcity, pandemics, demographics and migration, and urbanization.

In November 2007, Generation and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) announced a global collaboration to "find, fund and accelerate green business, technology and policy solutions with the greatest potential to help solve the current climate crisis." As part of the collaboration, prominent KPCB Partner John Doerr joined Generation's Advisory Board.

Online commentators and think-tank policy analysts have suggested that Al Gore has created a conflict of interest by working with GIM and simultaneously being the spokesperson for action on global warming. The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes that the government policies Gore advocated to the U.S. Senate in January 2009 "will make him and his friends extremely wealthy at the expense of consumers." Such criticism over this alleged conflict of interest has been made as early as March 2007.

GIM also owns a 10% stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), CCX in turn owns half of European Climate Exchange. This gives Al Gore a financial bias towards promoting global warming control through the issuing of carbon credits.