Stockholm (NordSIP) – Robert Rubinstein (pictured) has been running the worldwide conference and impact foundation TBLI, which stands for “Tripple Bottom Line Investing” for more than 20 years. NordSIP had a chance to catch up with Rubinstein and find out how the impact space has evolved and what investors need to focus on right now.
Pushing the pain buttons
Having started his entrepreneurial career in the publishing business, in the 1990s, Rubinstein set his mind on creating an economy based upon wellbeing. “I realised that I needed to have the business community on board, but that they would only respond to pain. So, I looked at what pain buttons I could press to get the attention of those business leaders behind the idea of profits and principles,” Rubinstein explains. “The three pain buttons that I found to be effective were finance, personnel and reputation. I studied these three pressure points and chose finance.”
“In the mid-nineties, I looked at the concentration of assets globally. I found out that if I only focused on the top 100 asset owners and managers, I could achieve the maximum impact with the least effort. By aggregating the assets of those top 100, I saw that they had direct or indirect control over 20 to 25% of worldwide assets. If only I could convince 100 guys!”
“By using an international conference on ESG and impact investing, I could help educate this group of investment allocators. For the next 25 years, I continually engaged with large institutional investors to educate them about ESG and Impact Investing. But it takes time to teach farming to hunters! And the financial sector mainly consists of hunters incentivised for short-term behaviour,” Rubinstein exclaims.
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