Category: FluxNotes

In a new report by McKinsey, The Internet of Things: Catching up to an accelerating opportunity, they have updated the analysis to estimate how much of that value has been captured, how the potential value of the IoT could evolve in the coming decade, and the factors that explain both. The market has grown considerably in the intervening years but not as fast as we expected in 2015. The IoT has faced headwinds related to change management, cost, talent, and cybersecurity, particularly in enterprises.

World Economic Forum released a set of universal environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics and disclosures to measure stakeholder capitalism that companies can report on regardless of their industry or region. Organized around the pillars of principles of governance, planet, people and prosperity, the identified metrics and disclosures align existing standards, enabling companies to collectively report non-financial disclosures.

January 31, 2021 The World Economic Forum’s January meeting traded the Swiss Alps for a virtual setting this year, as some 1500 global leaders joined hundreds of online panel discussions for the Davos Agenda.

Grounded in the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development, the WorldGBC’s Health & Wellbeing Framework drives healthy and equitable buildings in harmony with nature.

After a multi-year global consultation, WorldGBC’s Heath & Wellbeing Framework offers a comprehensive educational tool for a healthy and equitable built environment.

Convening expertise across the built environment, health and human rights, the Framework is published as an executive report and live digital tool. An innovation of this work is a cross-sectoral analysis across the entire building and construction lifestyle — redefining the scope of health for all people and their buildings, cities and communities.

2020 has brought about obstacles, but nimble advisors will prevail by finding new opportunities.

2020 HAS BEEN DEFINED by the global health pandemic.

Earlier this year, new trends started to take shape and slowly formed into standards that may be here to stay.

In our virtual work environment, being isolated in home offices, there has been an emergence in the financial advisory industry to reinforce the importance of corporate culture.

Advisors who have been paying attention to industry trends may have observed the theme of environmental, social and governance investing, also known as ESG investing, which focuses on investment returns by emphasizing ethical corporate behavior, advocacy on social issues or environmental soundness.

Nuveen funds are focused on combating income inequality and climate change.

In less than a decade, Rekha Unnithan invested $1 billion in a niche part of the market that was once so small most people on Wall Street hadn’t even heard of it.

Unnithan is co-head of impact investing at Nuveen, which oversees more than $1 trillion of assets, including over $5.8 billion in impact strategies. She joined the firm in 2012 to develop a business for investments that can both make money and leave a measurable positive impact on society and the environment. Just last week Nuveen attracted $150 million from institutional investors for a strategy focused on combating income inequality and climate change.

The coronavirus has hobbled economies all over the globe. But with that destruction comes new opportunities.

Alongside the financial destruction wrought by Covid-19 there comes new opportunities. European officials have seized on one in particular—mending battered economies in a way that also tackles global warming, or “building back greener.” But how to turn those words into action? Bloomberg renewables reporter Jess Shankleman reports from London on the policies that may bring that dream to fruition, and the sobering realities of trying to do so during a pandemic.

Apollo Global Management Inc. is venturing into the world of impact investing, a corner of finance where most of its private equity peers already have substantial operations.

Impact investing, where fund managers seek to both make money and leave a measurable positive impact on society or the environment, has gone from a niche discipline just a few years ago to a $715 billion market. The funds have been attracting investors at a time when the deadly coronavirus pandemic and racial unrest in the U.S. have highlighted societal inequalities.

The present Yearbook is the outcome of The Affordable Metropolis Initiative, a process launched in February 2018 in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) at the World Urban Forum 9 (WUF9). It is a joint effort by the Grand Paris Alliance for Metropolitan Development, the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) and the General Assembly of Partners (GAP). It is a voluntary contribution to the implementation of the Habitat III New Urban Agenda (NUA) and to the territorialization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also meant to support the realization of UN Habitat 2020-2025 Strategic Plan.

Shelter is one of life’s basic necessities. The biggest problem for millions of people around the world is that housing is often not affordable. What percentage of the average monthly income is required to afford the average mortgage payment? How much is rent in a local city compared to average New York City prices? This infographic examines the affordability of mortgages and rent in 102 countries around the world in a spectacular data visualization.

‘There is no incentive for local municipalities to change anything because homeowners vote, and homeowners understandably want to protect their home values.’

Heavily-regulated land-use zoning has become the norm across the United States over the last decade — and there’s strong reason to believe that has driven housing costs higher in many cities.

The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers. The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.