Heartland Blog

Tom Croft, Managing Director of Heartland Capital Strategies, asked Joe Enright, Executive Director at GCM Grosvenor, to address the question of how do we actually build the architecture for sustainable finance hub? And could this vehicle could be both the medium and the message in terms of regional capital matching up to projects’ needs and renewing investment in the Ohio Valley? Enright’s response was affirmative: “In my view, the sustainable [investment] hub, can be the pr

A mobilization of public and private capital on a scale not seen in the United States since the 1930s and 1940s is necessary to meet the challenge of the climate crisis. There is a transcendent social good to be achieved – avoiding the worst catastrophes of global warming. Moreover, overall energy costs as a share of GDP may actually go down with a more efficient, decarbonized economy. But as in the Roosevelt era, private capital will not play the decisive role it must in the

The mission of this meeting was to mobilize a new wave of sustainable finance opportunities in the four-state (Western Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky) Industrial/Appalachian region in alignment with the ReImagine Appalachia’s policy blueprint and the Marshall Plan for Middle America. Building on Heartland’s 2019 Steel Cities Capital Roundtable, we assembled sustainable investment and responsible contractor policies, models, and practices for this reg

Butch-Lewis Expedition Finally Reaches Promised Land! And, Biden DOL Dumps the Trump ESG-ETI Rule In our political climate-- with a bill as large and complex as the Covid relief bill President Biden hopes to sign Friday--there are bound to be disagreements about who should be rescued and by how much. Yet, in 2008-2009, after Wall Street banks and hedge funds destroyed the economy, leading to the loss of $4 trillion in workers’ pensions, there was bi-partisan support for balin

Emile Hallez, Investment News The two rules were among the most heavily contested measures instituted by the DOL under former Secretary Eugene Scalia, with the 401 (k) rule drawing nearly 9,000 public comments, most of which opposed it. The Department of Labor will not enforce two controversial Trump-era rules that restricted the use of ESG investments in retirement plans, the agency announced Wednesday. In a statement, the DOL said that it will take a hands-off approach to t

Dave Jamieson, Huffpost A politically elusive fix to the multiemployer pension crisis could finally become a reality, protecting retirees from drastic pension cuts. Retirement experts have been warning for years that more than 1 million workers and retirees could lose their pensions if Congress doesn’t act. Now help from Washington might finally arrive, thanks to an unlikely legislative opening provided by the pandemic. Congressional Democrats are moving a $1.9 trillion coron

Hazel Bradford, Pensions & Investments Public pension funds were net revenue generators for state and local governments in 2018, surpassing taxpayer contributions by $179 billion, according to a biennial study released Tuesday by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. That represents a 30.6% increase from the original study covering 2015-2016. In 2018, pension funds generated about $341.4 billion in state and local revenues through investments and ret

The two rules were among the most heavily contested measures instituted by the DOL under former Secretary Eugene Scalia, with the 401(k) rule drawing nearly 9,000 public comments, most of which opposed it. The Department of Labor will not enforce two controversial Trump-era rules that restricted the use of ESG investments in retirement plans, the agency announced Wednesday. In a statement, the DOL said that it will take a hands-off approach to the recently passed rules, Finan