Insight
Ma: Financial markets fail to price in externalities and systemic risks
“Really seeing the excesses during the boom times and seeing the despair and the irrational behavior right after the crisis just made me realize that, wow, like markets are highly inefficient. They are not pricing in externalities and these systemic risks.”
Insight
Ma: Allocators should pragmatically iterate into sustainable investing via high-conviction managers
“Because you don't really learn about these issue areas and the best practices until you actually start doing it in some capacity. And we find that those clients who start off with an eye towards fully integrating the portfolio in a sustainability lens, but are…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ma: Sustainable managers with durable cash flows remained resilient in volatility
“And we're seeing in this environment, the sustainable managers who are focused on high quality, durable cash flows have stayed really resilient in the market volatility that we've seen.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ma: Concentrated sustainable global equity strategies add value through market cycles
“We're finding really strong high conviction opportunities in global equities, for example, that have very high concentration and high sustainability oriented approaches. And they have added a lot of value to portfolios because again, they're focused on that du…”
Insight
Ma: Allocators must probe portfolio holdings to catch ESG inconsistencies
“What's really more relevant when you're engaging with these managers is, okay, let's go through your portfolio, and let's go through your holdings, right? How did you arrive at these decisions, given you have this ESG policy? And sometimes you can call out som…”
Insight
Ma: Negative screening alone is an incomplete sustainability tool
“So I think it is a tool, certainly, the negative screening, but it is certainly not a complete tool, and you have to combine it and use other tools at your disposal, like proactive solutions oriented investments, sector focused investments, fully ESG integrate…”
Insight
Ma: Sustainable real assets provide macro resilience via utility counterparties
“So I think there's a lot of good ballast in that part of the portfolio because these are again, cash flowing. These are typically resilient against macro shocks because your counterparties are utilities, investment grade corporates. So I think typically more s…”
Insight
Ma: Social inequality and unrest directly erode systemic investment value
“Need to build socially resilient portfolios, meaning if we have widespread and acute social inequality, that's just going to lead to reduced social cohesion. You have more social unrest, and that's really value eroding for everyone in the system.”
Opinion
Ma: Software connecting EV charging to grid offers compelling investment value
“One area that we're seeing is a lot of folks that focused on EVs and EV charging, which I think is certainly an area to look at. It's a market that's going down in terms of cost and pricing as more players come in. So I think what's more interesting in that ar…”
Insight
Ma: Clean Tech 1.0 failed because VCs misjudged capital intensity and commodities
“Just to distill it down, I think what happened there was there was certainly a lot of overhype, capital flowing in, especially by firms who May not have really developed the deep expertise on the sector. They may have developed expertise in semiconductors or s…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ma: Clean tech VC and PE returns rebounded strongly since 2013
“Since really, 2012, 2013, and we tracked this data at the company level in our database of venture and private equity backed clean tech companies. They've actually rebounded quite significantly since 2013, where if you look at the IRRs and the TVPIs of these c…”
Opinion
Ma: Allocators should engage all managers on ESG, not just dedicated funds
“We think that there is a strong opportunity for allocators to be engaging with all of their managers on sustainability, on ESG integration, on team diversity, And especially for public equity firms, right, how their practices and policies are reflected in thei…”
Insight
Ma: ESG engagement must tie to financial statements to avoid greenwashing
“So again, tying it to the financials, tying it to the economics, the fundamental economic statements are really important when you're having these conversations, because otherwise, we're going back to that greenwashing topic again, and it's not just about the …”
Insight
Ma: Sustainable investing expands analysis to capture non-financial risk signals
“What sustainable investing really allows you to do is take a little bit of a wider aperture, let's say a wide angle lens, and you're trying to capture more information, more material information that's not historically embedded in traditional investment analys…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ma: Cambridge Associates has over 150 clients implementing sustainable investing
“At Cambridge Associates, we now have over a 150 clients embedding and implementing Broadly, sustainable investing in some fashion, and we're only seeing that number grow over time.”
Assertion Supported
Ma: Industry operators and family offices launch dedicated climate funds
“We're actually also seeing some, especially on the private side, some operationally focused managers who have spun out of industry, of strategics, and even some family offices who have been very active in certain areas like environmental sustainability and cle…”
Assertion Supported
Ma: Wind and solar energy costs fell 70% and 90% last decade
“Solar and wind costs have come down dramatically over the Past decade. I think for wind, it's about 70% over the last decade. For solar, it's about 90% cost decline.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ma: Hedge funds offer fewer sustainable investment strategies to date
“Some asset classes may be harder to implement, like in hedge funds, where, frankly, we're not seeing as many offerings to date, but we're seeing some new products being formed, and we're going to assess those.”
