FIN30530

“There can be no Plan B, because there is no planet B”, Former United Nations General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon.
Environmental risk, climate change, and societal concerns have been at the centre of public debate for some time and there is growing evidence to suggest such concerns are increasingly important to the decision-making process. The United Nations developed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015) to guide the transition towards a sustainable and inclusive society that incorporates environmental and societal challenges. They established 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are of critical importance in facilitating this transition. While achieving these goals and successfully transitioning to a net zero carbon society requires a transdisciplinary approach, finance plays a central role. The primary function of the financial system is to channel funds to their most productive uses to maximise growth. Hence, finance can play a leading role in accelerating the transition to a decarbonized and more circular system by allocating investment to sustainable corporations and investment opportunities. Sustainable finance examines how finance interacts with economic, environmental, and societal issues. The traditional approach to finance focuses on maximising shareholder wealth, whereas here we will focus on financing that incorporates the interests of multiple stakeholders (both internal and external). In this module we will examine sustainability and why it matters, the challenges and opportunities for corporations including corporate governance and behaviour, internalizing externalities, changing business models, and sustainable reporting; and how to finance sustainability including sustainable equity investment, sustainable debt (green bonds, blue bonds, social bonds), and investing for long-term value creation.
Please note that this module is designed to be interactive, so student participation is essential.