Center for Sustainable Systems Studies

Global Capital Markets in the 21stCentury:
Profitably Integrating Environmental Considerations

Considering environmental performance and profitability into global capital markets was the subject of a CSSS seminar at Miami University April 30, 2001 by John Ganzi, President, Environment & Finance Enterprise.

Mr. Ganzi heads a strategic planning and executive training firm that focuses on how environmental issues affect the financial performance of industrial corporations and how the financial services industry can integrate these issues into their risk management processes. He spoke to a CSSS audience in Laws Hall.

Mr. Ganzi described how the global economy is breaking down many barriers to commerce, affecting investment decisions in many new ways. He noted more people are participating in the investment markets than ever before, and because of this growth, there is more demand and more providers of information on investment opportunities. At the same time, an increased awareness of environmental risks has led some financial advisors to consider an approach called “Sustainable Asset Management,” which enables investors to consider a company’s environmental record alongside their financial record.

Leading this transition in investment and financial analysis, he said, are Swiss banks, German insurance companies, British pension funds, and U.S. Foundations. Other major institutions in Asia and Europe are likely to follow because of the potential for profitability in markets that consider a corporation’s environmental record.
Sustainable Asset Management is just one manifestation of this new approach to investment analysis. It considers corporate adoption of the Sullivan Principles or its equivalent, the level of investment by the company in environmental technology, and the balancing by a business of the tri-partite relationship between ecology, economics and social values.

Mr. Ganzi’s seminar at Miami was made possible with funding from the John E. Dolibois Development Fund. He is an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Graduate Business School where he teaches MBA students and business executives how to integrate environmental issues into financial decisions. Also, he is the Executive Director of a newly incorporated non-profit, the Finance Institute for Global Sustainability (FIGS), that is focused on gathering, distilling and distributing information on the correlation of environmental and financial performance in business decision-making.

Mr. Ganzi holds Masters degrees in Environmental Science and in International Business from New York University and the University of Michigan, respectively, and an undergraduate degree in Business, Economics, and Government from Georgetown University.

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