Day 1 of the Green Mountain Summit at the Stoweflake Inn and it seems an age since I arrived here last year filled with apprehension and hope ahead of my presentation as an MBA student on Pension Fund Trustee attitudes to SRI issues. The weather is the same however: overcast, and rained most of the way up from Woodstock VT.
It was goods to see a number of friendly faces, and interesting to see who was holding out their shingles. Booth technology does not seem to have penetrated the SRI community, and while some have the space-frame boards system, there was no particular wow factor.
Maybe Peter Kinder leading off with his Fiduciary paper Pensions and the Companies They Own should have given me forewarning, but browsing through the booths I was struck by how many more lawyers were here. Last year Glass & Eisenhofer sponsored the Land's End backbacks, making a substantila effort. This year a number of other law firms have emerged, including one from the old suburbs, Schiffrin & Barroway LLP, from Radnor PA around the corner from the Templeton Foundation. I am intrigued that the business card is for "European Investor relations". Has someone spotted a bridging opportunity that I missed? The legal market is less the class action type suit that G&E are offering, and seem to be more like shareholder activism and corporate governance research.
While they play an important role, it really does make the summit seem more issue focused than investment focused.
An interesting conversation with the rep. from Sierra Club Mutual Funds, managed by Forward Management. Garvin, indicated that just half of the 800,000 members of Sierra Club invest in the mutual fund offering, and no mention of what percentage of assets. In talking about the fund, he did jump first to speak of performance, especially the run-up in oil in Q1 which hurt all SRI funds light on the sector and such dark-siders as ExxonMobil.
Hank Boerner from Rowan & Blewitt, an Interpublic Company based in NYC approached me with his web tool from ICCR whihc is used to track the resolutions sponsored by the network's disparate membership. It should go live in September, and he is looking for feedback on his Beta, and even wants advice on his pricing. Interesting if it may fit with any existing vendor products, like onereport or Socrates.
Wind site developer Western Wind Energy is back, and feeling bullish now that the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) for NY State is set at 25%, higher even than leader California's 20%. With this capital looking for investment, the opportunity window for wind is huge. They have developments in Arizona and New Brunswick, Canada, where they are listed. It was good to see the market-aware behaviour from a listed company: checking the stock price only to find Toronto closed for a bank holiday, Victoria Day. A statistic I appreciated was GE's ecomagination has ramped turbine revenue from 300m two years ago to $2bn in FY2005. But still, they have no answer to the age-old question: are windmills considered beautiful by beautiful people?!
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