Socially responsible investing through the equity funds in the global ownership network

We analyze the connectivity of equity investments to the firms in the global ownership network that are reported as non-compliant with Environment, Social, and Government (ESG) benchmarks. We find that a large number of shareholders have ownership linkages to non-ESG firms, most commonly with three or four degrees of separation. Analyzing the betweenness centrality for shareholders connecting the ultimate owners and non-ESG firms, we find that the investment management companies play important roles in channeling the investment money into non-ESG firms, where largest American asset managers commonly have one to two degrees of separation on their ownership linkages to those problematic firms. Since asset managers collect capital from investors by running the equity funds, we analyze the ownership stakes and the associated voting rights attributable to the equity funds investors. We estimate the distribution of the power of corporate control over non-ESG firms among specific asset managers (such as BlackRock and Fidelity) and among different types of the equity funds (such as mutual funds and exchanged-traded funds), and explores how investing in the equity funds rather than ownership investing may have shifted the distribution of the power to control those non-ESG firms.

MANAGEMENT OF AND POTENTIAL RETURN ON PRIVATE INVESTMENTS IN LATVIAN SPORTS

Latvian sports authorities under the Ministry of Education and Science are the main organisers of the sports life in Latvia. However, they have not been successful in providing equally good support to all athletes who need it. It is especially difficult to receive support for improving skills of individual athletes engaged in team sports. Often it is the individual mastery of an athlete that prohibits them from moving on to the adult level of sports of high achievement, even if the athlete was very talented and one of the best in the country, when he/she was young. The descriptive statistical method and content analysis were used to assess shortcomings in the allocation of finances in the Latvian sports industry. The study demonstrated that a successful process of private investments ensures a positive return on the investments, as well as the development of athletes. One way to build successful cooperation is by creating high-quality sports development centres or sports investment management companies, which will efficiently contribute to the athletes’ transition from youth to professional sports. The efficiency of the methodology developed can be demonstrated by creating a company, which would act as an example for attracting private investments in the development of athletes.

A Fund-Based Timberland Investment Performance Measure and Implications for Asset Allocation

Timberland investment management companies and institutional investors use indexes to calculate the performance of timberland investments. Most indexes are based on hypothetical timberland properties. The Timberland Performance Index (TPI), a fund-based performance measure, provides composite returns for actual, institutionally owned timberlands. The TPI has several desirable attributes: it uses publicly available data from real properties, is weighted by asset value, has a sufficiently long historical record that meaningful comparisons can be made with other assets, and can be updated quarterly. The TPI is employed to demonstrate how adding timberland to a portfolio influences risk-return relationships for institutional portfolios. For the 1981-1996 period it is found that adding timberland tends to enhance returns for given levels of risk. This is consistent with previous research, which employed hypothetical timberland indexes for this purpose. South. J. Appl. For. 22(3):143-147.