[MCN] Climate hardball : Has Trump met his match?

[Lance Olsen]

Bloomberg Green January 21, 2020

Finance
The World’s Most-Profitable Hedge Fund Is Now a Climate Radical
Chris Hohn runs $30 billion, and he’s ready to force companies to change.
By Edward Robinson <https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AD9-aRhmeXY/edward-robinson> and Nishant Kumar <https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ASjo8wSqtMA/nishant-kumar>
<<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/the-world-s-most-profitable-hedge-fund-is-now-a-climate-radical? <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/the-world-s-most-profitable-hedge-fund-is-now-a-climate-radical?>>>


Opening paragraphs

The hedge fund industry has no shortage of aggressive, in-your-face players, but few are as tough as Chris Hohn. The British billionaire takes the typical playbook to new levels—scuttling deals, pushing to remove bosses, and battering companies with litigation and threats. One opponent was so peeved after losing a boardroom battle with Hohn that he titled a book about the experience Invasion of the Locusts. That approach made Hohn’s TCI Fund Management <https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/1312701D:LN> the world’s best-performing, large hedge fund last year.

Now Hohn is bringing his hardball tactics to the fight against global warming. The money manager, with $30 billion in assets, is pushing portfolio companies to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and disclose their carbon footprint. If they don’t, he says he’ll oust their boards or dump their shares. Just in case anyone doubts his commitment, last fall Hohn and his charity donated £200,000 ($260,000) to Extinction Rebellion, the radical climate change movement whose members have blocked traffic in London and glued themselves to jetliners.

“In the war against fossil fuels, you can’t be super-picky about your allies,” says Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of Boston money manager GMO, a legendary investor who has long warned of climate catastrophe. Hohn “has shown you can make a big impact on companies with a lot of arm-twisting.”
<<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/the-world-s-most-profitable-hedge-fund-is-now-a-climate-radical? <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/the-world-s-most-profitable-hedge-fund-is-now-a-climate-radical?>>>

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A core question: What is “resilience”?

2018 — “Resilience is a popular narrative for conservation and provides an opportunity to communicate optimism that ecosystems can recover and rebound from disturbances.” (Emily S. Darling and Isabelle M. Côté, Science, March 2, 2018). 

2014 — “Emerging from a wide range of disciplines, resilience in policy-making has often been based on the ability of systems to bounce back to normality, drawing on engineering concepts. This implies the return of the functions of an individual, household, community or ecosystem to previous conditions, with as little damage and disruption as possible following shocks and stresses”  (Tanner et al, Nature Climate Change,  December 18, 2014). 

1938 — Resilience. 1- The act or power of springing back to a former position or shape. 2. The quantity of work given back by a body that is compressed to a certain limit and then allowed to recover itself, as a spring under pressure suddenly relaxed.”  (Funk & Wagnall’s New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, vol.2, M-Z 1938)




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