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Bud Light�s Fan Cans and Social Responsibility

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:16:11 +0000

On the one hand, you have to ask yourself, what took them so long? Now that Anheuser-Busch has rolled out a new marketing campaign in which it is packaging cans of Bud Light in the team colors of various college teams, it seems like an obvious idea. Other marketers of just about everything from stadium chairs to caskets put their product in the colors of the local team. Way back in the 1980s, when Doug Flutie was the star quarterback for Boston College, I saw a dog wearing a maroon and gold sweater with the words �Dog Flutie� on it.

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A New Social Responsibility Seal of Approval

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:55:04 +0000

I've never confirmed this but it would seem reasonable to assume that products sold by Whole Foods are grown or made by socially responsible companies. And we can probably assume that companies that are included in Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list would be good employers. And firms on Business Ethics 100 Best Corporate Citizens list are likely models of corporate governance.

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ExxonMobil Green Company of the Year. What?

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:40:36 +0000

Have we gone through the looking glass? Is up down and black white? Forbes magazine has named ExxonMobil its �Green Company of the Year.� Yes, the company that environmentalists love to hate, the largest oil producer in the world, one of the black hats to climatologists, has been cited for the steps it has taken to help reduce carbon emissions.

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Citigroup, Risk and Wall Street Pay

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:55:38 +0000

There�s an article in today�s New York Times about the Citigroup oil trader who is due to make about $100 million in compensation this year, after earning a similar amount last year, and how that fits in with the whole debate about compensation on Wall Street. It�s a story I blogged about recently after a report on National Public Radio.

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Community Investing for Faith-Based Investors

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:14:41 +0000

I can't help but think that community investing and religious groups have gone hand-in-hand since before Jesus� first swung a hammer. Community investing is all about helping low-income areas and providing opportunity to the disadvantaged. The payback for investors is seeing those areas and populations rise up while making a good return on their investment.

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NPR Report on Wall Street Bonuses

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:24:59 +0000

If you missed it this morning there was an excellent interview with David Wessel, economics editor at the Wall Street Journal, on NPR about Wall Street bonuses ("Bonus, Is It Still A Dirty Word") � which have returned with gusto. Specifically the conversation focused on one oil trader with Citigroup who will receive a $98 million bonus this year. According to Wessel the trader had a contract with Citigroup that said if he bet correctly on the price of oil and made the company a lot of money, he�d get a slice of it. Evidently he did and he will.

But Wessel also pointed out that there apparently has been a change in thinking among Wall Street firms about risk and reward. The country�s financial system was nearly brought down last year because of a preponderance of risk-taking without appropriate safeguards should investments go badly. Wessel explains the fundamental problem that existed � investment professionals took large risks because of the potential for extraordinary individual gains. When they flopped in the extreme all the risk fell on the company, the financial system and ultimately the taxpayer � but not on them. That�s an arrangement that is changing, he says.

Of course a $98 million bonus is exactly the type payday that critics of Wall Street say needs to change. At a time when nearly 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed it just shocks people. But a deal is a deal. If that Citigroup trader was offered a contract that would pay him that much money if he did well, then that�s what he should get. My guess is he probably wouldn�t have signed that contract if it also stated that he�d be liable for $98 million if his bets went south.

Record Number of Entries for 2009 Moskowitz Prize

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:47:46 +0000

Every year the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley�s Hass School of Business gives out the Moskowitz Prize, an award recognizing outstanding quantitative research in the field of socially responsible investing. That might sound a little dry, but it means there are people out there applying hard numbers to what critics would call the soft investment criteria of SRI, such as whether or not companies pollute or how they treat their employees.

This is the 14th year of the awards and more than 30 research entries were accepted, the most ever, according to First Affirmative Financial Network. First Affirmative is the co-sponsor of SRI in the Rockies, the annual conference on sustainable and responsible investing during which the award winner is announced.

The award winner last year was a study entitled �The Wages of Social Responsibility,� which demonstrated that socially responsible investors can do well by adopting the �best-in-class� method for their portfolios, rather than relying on negative screens. In prior years the winning entries have looked at whether or not the stock market fully values intangibles; examined the economic value of corporate �eco-efficiency;� and asked the question �Does virtue pay?� by studying corruption and international valuation.

None of that is light reading at the beach. But it�s all useful to investors who are committed to having their money work in positive social ways while earning the best return possible.

"The questions academics are considering today are much more specific than just four or five years ago,� says Lloyd Kurtz, Moskowitz Prize administrator and senior portfolio manager at Nelson Capital Management, an investment advisory affiliate of Wells Fargo. �We have moved well past simply wondering whether socially responsible investing makes sense, to carefully examining specific linkages."

The Moskowitz Prize is named for Milton Moskowitz, an investments writer and one of the first investigators to publish comparisons of the financial performance of screened and unscreened portfolios. He also developed "The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America," a list that is published annually in Fortune magazine.

This year�s SRI in the Rockies Conference, the event�s 20th anniversary, will be held Oct. 25-28 in Tucson, Arizona.

Bond Rally Different From Surge In Stocks

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:15:16 +0000

The surge in stocks during July has breathed new life into the rally that began back in March. During the past three weeks markets on Wall Street have climbed more than 10 percent. Surprisingly strong earnings reports and some promising economic news in housing, for example, have optimists believing this bull will continue to run.

But don�t expect the same from the fixed income rally that has also occurred this year. The iBoxx investment grade bond price index, an independent benchmark of bond performance, is up more than 11 percent since the beginning of the second quarter, while the iBoxx high-yield index is up more than 26 percent.

Gregory Habeeb, senior vice president and head of taxable fixed income investments at Calvert Investments says the rally that has taken place during the first half of this year is historic, but largely over.

�There�s a lot less opportunity to five or six months ago,� says Habeeb. �It�s not over, but you�ve missed a lot of the opportunity at this point. It�s still there but more mildly so.�

Three factors were behind the bond rally, according to Habeeb and his team at Calvert. First, when the economy tanked and credit markets slammed shut last year, bond investors focused their buying on safe U.S. Treasuries. But gradually they�ve become more willing to purchase riskier debt such as high yield bonds.

The rally has also been fed by a boom in the issuance of corporate bonds after nearly reaching a standstill last year. More than $600 billion in corporate high grade and junk bonds were issued during the first six months of the year, nearly one-third more than the same period last year, according to the financial news website breakingnews.com.

Finally, in a report Calvert says �signs of recovery and government intervention are helping sectors of the fixed-income markets return to good health.� One example of that government intervention that Habeeb points to is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation�s �Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program,� in which the federal government said it would guarantee certain debt issued by banks to strengthen the nation�s banking system and build confidence among investors.

�No one is talking about bankruptcy among the banks anymore and that�s huge,� says Habeeb.

Socially responsible investors looking for bond funds among SRI firms can consider the Ave Maria Bond Fund, the Calvert Social Investment Fund, the CRA Qualified Investment Fund, the Thrivant Core Bond Fund and the Pax World High Yield Bond Fund. Those are only mentioned as available funds and not recommendations.

Follow me on Twitter

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:29:58 +0000

You can get my updates on socially responsible investing on Twitter. Follow me at billdonovan78.

Microsoft Invests $1 Million to Help Women in Technology

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:27:50 +0000

If you're into social investing you try to follow where your companies put their money (which is technically your money as a shareholder). Here's a short article about Microsoft and an investment it has made in the National Center for Women & Information Technology, which is a group of more than 170 businesses, universities, government agencies and non-profits helping to expand the participation of women in IT.