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Holding Business to Account
Photo courtesy Geeta Aiyer
In the early 1990s, company leaders for Albertsons, a rapidly expanding supermarket chain, flew to Boston to meet with Geeta Aiyer (MBA 1985),a young analyst and portfolio manager at the United States Trust Company of Boston, to discuss an issue Aiyer thought was important to their bottom line: gender equity. “I suddenly realized the power, the reach we had as shareholders,” Aiyer recalls with some amazement.
After that experience, “the idea of being a passive investor, along for the ride, no longer appealed to me,” Aiyer says. Shareholders were owners, she realized, and they had a say in how a company ran and the ability to influence everything from labor practices to environmental policies. It would be years before the model Aiyer envisioned would be christened “impact investing,” but she launched Walden Capital Management in 1994 to pursue the dual goals of financial return and social change on behalf her clients. Following Walden’s acquisition, she founded Boston Common Asset Management, in 2003.
By the fall of 2020, Boston Common had $3 billion under management and a mission to be, as Aiyer explains, “responsible investors who pursue financial returns but who also use the unique access and voice we have as investors to engage management and redirect corporate efforts toward long-term sustainability.” The firm has been active in encouraging companies to be leaders on issues from climate change to human rights and environmental solutions, among many others.
“These kinds of changes are positive for the company's fundamentals—for its profitability, its long-term success, its consumer and employee loyalty, the brand equity it has built. And if you take a slightly longer-term view, you see that,” she observes. “We’re in the business of asking our companies for more accountability and transparency, and really empowering their ability to act for the long term.”
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