SRI - a Win-win Path for Germany?

The traditional way of how the financial industry allocates its investments is likely to shift to reflect different individual ethical concepts of target groups and take weak to strong patterns of sustainability into account. Socially responsible investments (SRI) have become a growth market and are en vogue also in Germany. SRI may even replace our current paradigm of how money gets invested, how fiduciary duties are interpreted, and how performance is measured. Joachim H. Böttcher argues that future responsible investors target for an accepted rate of financial return, and also strive to gain an ESG add-on performance. Once institutional and retail investors and the financial industry alike start to accept the SRI business case, advocate it, and finally act in the light of this new paradigm, ESG-driven investment methodologies may well enter into the mainstream. This academic book, written by a reflective practitioner, aims to provide a background of SRI's historic roots, the dilemma of the de-fragmented definitions available of varying ethical concepts, and of different applied responsible investment research methodologies. Furthermore, it investigates today's and future effects of an investment culture that strives for sustainability based on the integration of soft non-financial ESG data-based factors. For this assessment it outlines optional paths in regard to effects on eco-, social and corporate governance innovation.