Assertion certainty 3/5 debate potential 1/5

Al Gore asked Goldman Sachs to advise on a $35M sustainability acquisition

David Blood · Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143) · Jun 22, 2020 · at 15:25

David Blood describes the initial connection facilitated by Goldman Sachs senior leader Phil Murphy that led to Blood meeting Al Gore and subsequently launching Generation Investment Management.

0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Phil had been approached by Al Gore about Goldman Sachs representing Gore in acquiring a company called Sustainable Asset Management. And it was a very small acquisition. I think it would have been thirty-five million dollars or something like that, an acquisition that Goldman Sachs wasn't going to do.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from David Blood

Disclosure
Blood: Generation has avoided hydrocarbon investments for a decade on economic grounds
“So, for example, we have not owned energy businesses for a decade. We've not owned hydrocarbon businesses because we don't think they're priced properly. They haven't really priced the fact of climate change, and we think they have a significant stranded asset…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 29:08 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Assertion Supported
David Blood: Generation's profits come entirely from performance fees, not AUM
“And so very specifically, since we founded the firm in 2004, Almost to the penny, every dollar that we've earned in performance fee has been our profit. We've not had profits based on asset center management.”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 23:45 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Disclosure
Blood: Generation invested early in Facebook but exited over data practices
“We were investors in Facebook. Early on. And we ultimately decided that how they were treating information, and how they were dealing with some of their challenges, which they still have, was unsatisfactory to how we were thinking about sustainability.”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 31:50 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Disclosure
Blood: Generation uses simultaneous voting across the team to approve investments
“Mark and Miguel cannot buy something unless it's on the focus list, and the focus list is voted on by the entire global equity team. We wouldn't necessarily call it has to be unanimous, but we clearly tried to ensure that the votes are equally based, if you wi…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 37:56 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blood: Asset owners will require impact-based performance measurement within years
“And we think actually, as time goes on, and by time we mean couple of years, not decades, that all investors, all asset owners will be required, will require of us, and probably their own stakeholders will require that their investment performance be based upo…”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 43:57 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Opinion
Blood: Major financial firm bankruptcies stem mostly from cultural failures
“Turns out that since I've been in finance now 35 years, there have been, I think, probably 10, 15 major organizations that have gone bankrupt, and they've mostly gone out of business for failures of culture and business principles”
David Blood Jun 22, 2020 ▶ 9:47 Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 700 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.