The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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: 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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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”
Blood: Employee treatment and governance structures predict corporate success
“Understanding companies and understanding management teams, you could get a sense of whether they would be successful or not dependent upon how they treated their people, their compensation structures, their leadership structures, their governance structures.”
Blood: Sustainable advocacy is ignored without consistent, strong returns
“Well, actually, if we cannot deliver significant and consistent, strong investment results, we can do all the advocacy we want, but no one will listen because it'll be uninspiring.”
Blood: Generation does not use negative screening to select portfolio companies
“Oftentimes, people have thought, well, sustainable investors, generation, all you're doing, you're excluding industries, and you're negative screening, and we've never done that. We've always actually been positively defining what are the types of businesses w…”
Blood: Generation turns over its portfolio roughly once every 2 to 3 years
“Well, we very clearly talk about being long-term, and our portfolios will turn over sort of once every two or three years.”
Blood: Net-zero transition will be most important economic shift in history
“We think that the transformation to net zero will be the most important economic transition in history, and therefore investors run significant risk as well as have significant opportunity if they manage this transition, this transformation very well.”
Blood: Generation emphasizes the business case for sustainable investing over ethics
“We've always felt that coming from investment backgrounds, we have a responsibility to always make the business case. We have strong views from ethics and morals perspective, and we can make that case, but we've always felt very strongly we have to make the bu…”
Al Gore asked Goldman Sachs to advise on a $35M sustainability acquisition
“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 acquisi…”
Blood: Generation maintains an active focus list of about 125 companies
“Develop ultimately what we call our focus list, a list of, it's now I think about a 125 companies that we're actively following and researching that subject to price we're prepared to invest in.”
Blood: Generation runs a concentrated portfolio of 40 to 50 stocks
“We're concentrated. I know many people think concentrated is 20 to 25 stocks. We're sort of 40 to 50 stocks, and I can go into why we think that that's a better approach, but in any event, we're concentrated.”
Blood: Generation's top 10 positions comprise 40% to 50% of its portfolio
“And we tend to find that our 10 biggest positions can be a sort of 40 to 50% of our portfolio.”
Goldman Sachs considered and rejected launching an online broker in 1996
“I was actually asked In 1996 to consider whether Goldman Sachs should set up an online discount broker. Which we ultimately included was a bad idea”