Full Version: Gore Raises $5 Billion for Investment Fund

Gore Raises $5 Billion for Investment Fund

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The sustainable investment firm run by Al Gore is about to be closedto new investors, having raised close to its $5 billion target.
The firm, [b]Generation Investment Management[/b], willprobably restrict inflows into its main Global Equity Fund next month,Mr. Gore and David Blood, co-founder of the company, said at a newsconference Tuesday.
Mr. Blood said the firm could not manage more than $5 billion inassets. While assets under management did not yet correspond to thatfigure, he said, commitments were in that range.
He declined to name clients, but said that they were typicallyinstitutions, with 45 to 50 percent coming from Europe, 25 percent fromAustralia and the rest from the United States.
The private Swiss bank [b]Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch[/b],which started selling the fund in Europe last year, is now the biggestinvestor in it, said the bank’s senior partner, Thierry Lombard.
Mr. Gore and a United Nations panel on the environment were awardedthe Nobel Peace Prize in October for raising awareness of the threatfrom climate change.
The fund, founded in 2004 by Mr. Gore and Mr. Blood, a formerGoldman Sachs partner, invests in companies that follow so-calledsocially responsible guidelines in the expectation that they willreport better returns.
“More money is allocated by markets around the world in one hourthan by all the governments on the planet in a full year,” Mr. Goresaid.
“The principles and ways and values that have an impact on the waymarkets allocate resources can have an enormous effect” in tacklingclimate change, he said.
Mr. Gore declined to give performance details for the fund.
The fund’s largest holding is the 7 percent of assets invested in [b]Novo Nordisk[/b], the world’s largest insulin maker. Mr. Gore and Mr. Blood have also invested in [b]Nestlé[/b], the world’s largest food company, and [b]Johnson Controls[/b], the largest maker of automotive seats and batteries.
Novo Nordisk, traded in Denmark, has advanced 34 percent over thepast 12 months, while Nestlé has risen 2.1 percent in Zurich andJohnson Controls, in Milwaukee, has fallen 0.8 percent.
The Morgan Stanley Capital International index has declined 12 percent over the same period.
“The investors that are more attracted to the strategy we follow aremanaging long-term assets toward long-term goals,” Mr. Gore said.“Those looking for a quick hit in the market place, to skim the creamand go somewhere else, those are not the investors attracted to thisstrategy.”