Something is happening to ownership. Does it matter?  I believe that it does. The way companies behave will shape the health of our society. It is likely – although not inevitable – that the way companies are owned will shape how they behave. Companies are unlikely to get far as a force for good if their owners don’t like the idea! That is why Tomorrow’s Company is exploring the question “What is happening to ownership?”. What do you think?

Tomorrow's Company have a long history of looking at how the financial services work as part of an overall system and where the weaknesses are, major publications include Tomorrow's Global Company (2007), Restoring Trust (2004) and Tomorrow's Owners (to be launched in October 2008).  We are in a strong position to help frame solutions to the current financial crisis, however not a think tank for knee jerk reactions, we are currently having healthy debate about what policies should be.  We are sharing some of this on forceforgood.com in the form of resources and blogs tagged with the issue 'global financial crisis'.  We aim not just to be transparent in our thoughts but to encourage comments from a forceforgood community.

A summary of some of the different pieces Tomorrow's Comany has produced relating to the investment system from which we will develop our policy relating to the financial crisis.

The London G-20 Summit, April 2nd, marked a useful new beginning for multi-lateralism.  The eclipsing of the G-8 was as necessary for the world as the new informal proposals by China, India, Russia and Brazil for a new global reserve currency to complement the US dollar and the euro. 

Marking the 20th Anniversary of SRI in the Rockies offers more than an opportunity to review the hard-won progress of investors to prove that socially responsible investing is viable and now clearly out-performs traditional mainstream investing.  Since the credit crises of 2008-2009, we can now assert with confidence that investing for long-term sustainability and taking ESG factors as material to asset valuation could have actually helped avert these crises.   We investors are now winning the paradigm battle and cite the evidence to show that the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is bunk and by the same token show that the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and, yes, even the sacred tenets of the "rational investor" and the Black-Scholes Merton Options Pricing Model all are part of history.