Rodney Schwartz of ClearlySo - Impact Investing Is Growing, But We Need More Big Players To Get Involved

Rodney Schwartz is a leader in impact investing and the founder & CEO of ClearlySo, Europe's leading impact investment bank. He founded the company 10 years ago, the same week in which one of his former employers - Lehman Brothers - collapsed, and it has now helped over 100 companies obtain access to more than £200m in funding. In this episode, he shares his wisdom and experience of decades as an investment banker and pioneer in impact investing. He also highlights some of the challenges that we are still facing to really push the agenda and access to capital, as financial institutions have been more of an obstacle in how capital moves from people with money to people who need money to generate impact.

Highlights in this episode:

• Impact is the 3rd dimension to investing

• The accelerating growth of impact investing

• How ClearlySo became the leading European Impact Investment Bank

• The challenge of creating impact and future of impact investment

• Returns from impact investing

• The players that are active in impact investing

• How large banks are slowing down impact investing

• How can people get involved with ClearlySo

• Drivers of growth in impact investing

• Leaders’ tips on hiring and working with investors

Useful link:

ClearlySo https://www.clearlyso.com/

Partners Group https://www.partnersgroup.com/en/

Axa Investment Managers https://www.axa-im.com/en/

Lombard Odier https://www.lombardodier.com/home.html

Bulb Energy https://bulb.co.uk/

IESO Healthcare https://www.iesohealth.com/

Weeding Tech https://www.weedingtech.com/

Third Space Learning https://thirdspacelearning.com/

ClearlySo blog https://www.clearlyso.com/category/blog/

Chapters:

[00:40] Intro

[01:50] What is impact investment?

[04:00] What variables do you look at when looking at impact?

[05:30] Why impact investing is attracting so much money?

[08:40] Growth of impact investing will be from institutional investors.

[10:00] ClearlySo's investor base and deal flow

[11:00] Financial institutions are obstacles to impact investing

[16:00] Bulb Energy - energy sector desperately needs change

[17:45] The UK has developed an amazing startup incubation ecosystem

[20:20] Chamath Palihapitiya on inflated growth

[25:00] Faster growth and VC models are good for impact

[28:00] These are no just startups

[30:00] There is more than enough money out there

[37:00] What can investors do?

[40:00] Fiscal titling - taxing polluters and giving credit to impact

[43:40] What returns can impact investors expect?

[45:50] There is strong evidence that there is no additional cost to impact

[49:00] Taken us 10 years to get to a point where it is sustainable

[52:00] Growing and hiring people to ClearlySo

[55:00] Advice to the younger Rodney

[57:00] How can people help ClearlySo? Where ClearlySo will be in the next 5 years?

[1:00:00] Not being a fortress-like other investment banks

[1:04:40] Impact investment will be ubiquitous in 10 years

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