I was living in Hong Kong it was a warm
night the time was 1:00 a.m. and that
seemed to be the magic hour that I
happen to be getting home every day for
the last 60 days because I was in the
rising ranks of investment banking in
the mergers and acquisition team and
that night just before I opened at all I
paused and I looked across left and
right in the empty streets and up into
the amazing skylines of Hong Kong and
thought to myself Harry what are you
doing why on earth are you spending your
life and your youth doing something in
the office where you’re actually at home
care about and at that point I paused
and I cried because I didn’t have an
answer for myself I realized I have to
go back and to listen to my inner voice
and my inner voice was telling me that I
have to find a purpose it the answer
wasn’t to go out there and find the new
job or to find another role I knew it
was something deeper within so I made a
decision to drop everything and go on an
adventure my management of the firm at
the time they scratched their heads and
they said things are going so well but
if you must go fine you can go on a
sabbatical so with no other purpose than
to find my purpose and to have fun I
went on a journey I went on a journey
diving into cultures into nature into
dancing on the streets of Havana singing
on the on the beaches in Curacao and
spending time deep in the rainforest in
the Amazon with indigenous tribes and
the medicine man and deep in the jungles
nature seemed to speak to me mother
nature said there are things that’s
happening on this earth
but I’m quite right and what I was
seeing proved that there were plumes of
black smoke in the middle of Amazonian
jungle from oil and gas industry that
should not be there
where water used to be abundant was a
try desert and all of this stimuli made
me realize and it imbued with me with a
sense of passion and an understanding
that me as an individual have a role to
play
so with that sense of urgency as well as
passion I went back to the real world
and oh my what a time it was you see it
was clear that the population was
continued to grow exponentially
the middle class was also
ever-increasing consumption as a result
was also increasing exponentially but
the resources was not there is no plan B
and there was no Planet B and the
resources were finite climate change was
real and Israel as I entered back into
the real world it was a monumental time
in 2015 as Paris agreement happened at
cop21 under the United Nations General
Assembly 193 nations came together and
agreed that the world cannot go up more
than two degrees scenario at most at the
same time the sustainable development
goals happened also under the auspices
of United Nations where the world was
given a framework to talk about and
discuss in a unified language what it
means to have impact the 17 goals 169
underlying goals were created that it’s
divergent so wide all the way from no
poverty to clean energy to justice and
peace and there are reasons why not only
governments but companies are taking
heat of sustainable development out of
many factors one is retaining talent and
many of these Millennials today are
saying I don’t want to join a company
that isn’t giving back to the society
businesses as they look at sustainable
development
it also requires enormous amount of
funding sums that we cannot even fathom
in the trillions and that requires the
type of funding called sustainable
finance that doesn’t only take into
account financial returns but also
perhaps the unseen drivers in the bottom
line today including environmental
social and governance aspects so let me
just share with you the journey that the
sustainable finance community has been
on the first step was to say risk
mitigation let’s make sure that we are
not harming the environment we’re not
harming the humanity
and at the same time making sure that
there’s no liability on our balance
sheets and that sense of risk mitigation
evolved over time to say okay by doing
no harm we have to contribute to the
society and so companies and financial
institutions started to come out with
policies that said for example no more
coal financing because coal was so
materially out of line in coming to you
a two-degree scenario pathway the
investor community also came together
almost two decades ago to say that there
needs to be a set of principles that
investors must hit by in order to be
able to incorporate environmental social
and governance aspects into the way that
they invest and that’s called United
Nations or UN principles for responsible
investment which currently has almost
2,000 signatories and 81 trillion US
dollars worth of assets under management
and under these principles it doesn’t
mean that the money has to be given
away on the philanthropic basis
financial sustainability is also
important so they’re looking at ways how
do we actually incorporate these
environment social governance aspects
was also think financially financially
sustainable another movement that the
investors have initiated and currently
ongoing is what’s called climate action
100-plus which represents 289 investors
and almost thirty trillion worth of
capital and they are looking to work
with those companies that are heavy
emitters of greenhouse gases and seeing
how can they cart emissions how can they
make their business more sustainable and
how can they improve the disclosures
that they do around financial risks
related to climate change and why are
these investors the pension funds where
you put your money to us in the
government pension funds the asset
owners institutional investors and the
money that you put into the stock
markets and bonds why is this so
important in the hierarchy of finances
that’s because the total financial
capital market system represents about
140 trillion worth of assets ninety-six
trillion in bonds and just under 46
trillion in equity capital markets and
it is this capital coming from the top
which built us into the capital markets
and gets shifted into as investments
into companies corporate and banking
institutions one of the movements one of
the products that has taken off it’s
called green bonds social bonds
sustainability bonds and mind you I say
it has taken off in the grand scheme of
100 trillion almost 100 trillion worth
of bond capital markets outstanding
green bonds still today account for less
than 1% we must come to a time where all
bonds and also all finance is actually
sustainable finance or green bonds or
sustainability bonds
so we’re far from there yet but the
investors and companies are looking to
demonstrate and show in a transparent
manner
where the money is going and often
people think when we talk about
stainability it only means renewable
energy far from that
Blackrock which is one of the largest
investors in the world today said the
impact of their portfolio of green bond
investments is actually far larger than
the impact of the renewable energy
investments let me give you a couple
examples of two companies that you may
know there’s a company called Apple who
currently represent about 2% of the
total equity capital markets out there
because they’ve recently just hit one
trillion mark when it comes to market
capitalization they raised 2.5 billion
US dollars in green bond and some of the
uses that they put this towards is the
state of the art headquarters the Apple
Park or doughnuts in may look like a
doughnut and they have father made all
of their operations now hundred percent
renewable energy source and they’re
putting efforts towards making their
supply chain closed-loop so using the
resources and putting it back into the
beginning of the cycle so one of the
uses was this robot that can dismantle
iPhones at super super high speed up to
200 phones per hour and you’ll take
apart all the precious metal parts and
important parts and they’ll put that
back into the manufacturing system
another company that you just may know
called Starbucks now Starbucks has been
one of the key drivers in the coffee
market where they are setting standards
as to what it means to have sustainable
coffee they worked with a large NGO
called Conservation International to
come up with 249 indicators as to what
it means to have sustainable coffee
along the supply chain agricultural
practices distribution and so on so out
of the 500 million US dollar raised as
well as yen sustainability form that
they had raised much of that went into
sourcing sustainable coffee and some of
it also went to support farmers
development in sustainable agriculture
but the capital markets aren’t the only
developments that we have been seeing
the low market where the banking’s
actually deploy their own balance sheet
to lend have also been innovating it is
the bank’s intentions in the
transactions that I described to try to
reward companies that are looking to
improve their environmental social
governance standards so if the overall
sustainability improves then the bank’s
actually reward them with a discount in
the loan pricing and this type of
transaction has been picking up in the
last year and a half or so and large
companies olam which is the large
agricultural business Royal Philips a
health care business we nuit which is
the waste to product business as well as
DSM which is a chemicals business have
signed on because they want to
demonstrate to the financial community
that they are looking to make a
difference with their business and in
that process the CFO’s and the
treasurer’s of each of these companies
become stakeholders in the companies
movement towards becoming more
sustainable now so I just talked about
transactions that already happened but I
can also tell you we’re very far from
reaching the goals on the Paris
agreement as well as the sustainable
development goals
I will reinforce the message that you
heard earlier that we cannot continue on
a linear economy where we produce use
and waste the new economy that we’re
moving towards is called circular
economy although that economy where
you’re looking to reuse reduce and
recycle and along the way you’re looking
at extending the life of the assets and
using increasing the usage or
productivity of the assets that sit idle
think of uber think of Airbnb and all of
this requires rethinking in the
financial terms the concept of security
you see
that banks take an asset and say I will
lend you money on the back of this asset
and if you don’t pay me back I will take
this asset that may no longer hold in
concepts where ownership is unclear or
the movement of this asset as it gets
segregated to make it more nimble and to
increase the productivity also changes
the concept of security and so the banks
need to also continue innovating in
financial models to fund the circular
economy not only that in my mind
technological innovations is and should
be synonymous with sustainable
development you see the demand with
things like connected infrastructure
Internet of Things mobile connectivity
much of the demand for this is going to
be feeding directly into sustainable
development all those trillions that I
mentioned that the world needs in order
to achieve the goals that we want to
under STS and Paris agreement much of
that goes to connected infrastructure
for example where you must be able to
real-time assess is there leakage in
water is there if the energy efficiency
going down of certain assets and all of
this requires Internet of Things and one
big black box that often does not get
connected to sustainable development or
in the minds of most people for that
matter quantum computing it is the most
powerful computer out there today
far beyond supercomputers and it’s all
about being able to look at very complex
set of potential outcomes and be able to
compute that at SuperSpeed and climate
change to degree scenario pathway
looking at the best drug pathways these
are all scenario building exercises in
order to get to optimal solutions and
quantum computing is going to change the
world and we must make
sure that from day one when we look at
quantum computing and ask the technology
developers and matures and can be put
under commercial use that this is
connected to sustainable development so
all of this is happening today but it
cannot happen without people who stand
up and say I think this is important and
even though I may feel that I don’t have
the resources I don’t have the skillset
but you have to believe that you can
make a difference and these heroes and
heroines and the change makers are
actually all among us you guys are here
because you open mind that you want to
learn and you want to drive towards
change so in the context of sustainable
finance powering sustainable development
in order to help the community and the
humanity to thrive we can each go out
and talk to your banker friends your
investor friends your own company to ask
what are we doing in order to support
sustainable development to support the
Paris agreement to support the
sustainable development goals it so
happens that I was fortunate to have
been unhappy in sustainable now in
Investment Banking because that’s what
drove me to go out and find my purpose
in that please join me and join a large
community of us in driving that change
in saying there is no plan B there is no
plan of B and for us to strive we must
stand up and support the sustainable
development movement thank you [Applause]
night the time was 1:00 a.m. and that
seemed to be the magic hour that I
happen to be getting home every day for
the last 60 days because I was in the
rising ranks of investment banking in
the mergers and acquisition team and
that night just before I opened at all I
paused and I looked across left and
right in the empty streets and up into
the amazing skylines of Hong Kong and
thought to myself Harry what are you
doing why on earth are you spending your
life and your youth doing something in
the office where you’re actually at home
care about and at that point I paused
and I cried because I didn’t have an
answer for myself I realized I have to
go back and to listen to my inner voice
and my inner voice was telling me that I
have to find a purpose it the answer
wasn’t to go out there and find the new
job or to find another role I knew it
was something deeper within so I made a
decision to drop everything and go on an
adventure my management of the firm at
the time they scratched their heads and
they said things are going so well but
if you must go fine you can go on a
sabbatical so with no other purpose than
to find my purpose and to have fun I
went on a journey I went on a journey
diving into cultures into nature into
dancing on the streets of Havana singing
on the on the beaches in Curacao and
spending time deep in the rainforest in
the Amazon with indigenous tribes and
the medicine man and deep in the jungles
nature seemed to speak to me mother
nature said there are things that’s
happening on this earth
but I’m quite right and what I was
seeing proved that there were plumes of
black smoke in the middle of Amazonian
jungle from oil and gas industry that
should not be there
where water used to be abundant was a
try desert and all of this stimuli made
me realize and it imbued with me with a
sense of passion and an understanding
that me as an individual have a role to
play
so with that sense of urgency as well as
passion I went back to the real world
and oh my what a time it was you see it
was clear that the population was
continued to grow exponentially
the middle class was also
ever-increasing consumption as a result
was also increasing exponentially but
the resources was not there is no plan B
and there was no Planet B and the
resources were finite climate change was
real and Israel as I entered back into
the real world it was a monumental time
in 2015 as Paris agreement happened at
cop21 under the United Nations General
Assembly 193 nations came together and
agreed that the world cannot go up more
than two degrees scenario at most at the
same time the sustainable development
goals happened also under the auspices
of United Nations where the world was
given a framework to talk about and
discuss in a unified language what it
means to have impact the 17 goals 169
underlying goals were created that it’s
divergent so wide all the way from no
poverty to clean energy to justice and
peace and there are reasons why not only
governments but companies are taking
heat of sustainable development out of
many factors one is retaining talent and
many of these Millennials today are
saying I don’t want to join a company
that isn’t giving back to the society
businesses as they look at sustainable
development
it also requires enormous amount of
funding sums that we cannot even fathom
in the trillions and that requires the
type of funding called sustainable
finance that doesn’t only take into
account financial returns but also
perhaps the unseen drivers in the bottom
line today including environmental
social and governance aspects so let me
just share with you the journey that the
sustainable finance community has been
on the first step was to say risk
mitigation let’s make sure that we are
not harming the environment we’re not
harming the humanity
and at the same time making sure that
there’s no liability on our balance
sheets and that sense of risk mitigation
evolved over time to say okay by doing
no harm we have to contribute to the
society and so companies and financial
institutions started to come out with
policies that said for example no more
coal financing because coal was so
materially out of line in coming to you
a two-degree scenario pathway the
investor community also came together
almost two decades ago to say that there
needs to be a set of principles that
investors must hit by in order to be
able to incorporate environmental social
and governance aspects into the way that
they invest and that’s called United
Nations or UN principles for responsible
investment which currently has almost
2,000 signatories and 81 trillion US
dollars worth of assets under management
and under these principles it doesn’t
mean that the money has to be given
away on the philanthropic basis
financial sustainability is also
important so they’re looking at ways how
do we actually incorporate these
environment social governance aspects
was also think financially financially
sustainable another movement that the
investors have initiated and currently
ongoing is what’s called climate action
100-plus which represents 289 investors
and almost thirty trillion worth of
capital and they are looking to work
with those companies that are heavy
emitters of greenhouse gases and seeing
how can they cart emissions how can they
make their business more sustainable and
how can they improve the disclosures
that they do around financial risks
related to climate change and why are
these investors the pension funds where
you put your money to us in the
government pension funds the asset
owners institutional investors and the
money that you put into the stock
markets and bonds why is this so
important in the hierarchy of finances
that’s because the total financial
capital market system represents about
140 trillion worth of assets ninety-six
trillion in bonds and just under 46
trillion in equity capital markets and
it is this capital coming from the top
which built us into the capital markets
and gets shifted into as investments
into companies corporate and banking
institutions one of the movements one of
the products that has taken off it’s
called green bonds social bonds
sustainability bonds and mind you I say
it has taken off in the grand scheme of
100 trillion almost 100 trillion worth
of bond capital markets outstanding
green bonds still today account for less
than 1% we must come to a time where all
bonds and also all finance is actually
sustainable finance or green bonds or
sustainability bonds
so we’re far from there yet but the
investors and companies are looking to
demonstrate and show in a transparent
manner
where the money is going and often
people think when we talk about
stainability it only means renewable
energy far from that
Blackrock which is one of the largest
investors in the world today said the
impact of their portfolio of green bond
investments is actually far larger than
the impact of the renewable energy
investments let me give you a couple
examples of two companies that you may
know there’s a company called Apple who
currently represent about 2% of the
total equity capital markets out there
because they’ve recently just hit one
trillion mark when it comes to market
capitalization they raised 2.5 billion
US dollars in green bond and some of the
uses that they put this towards is the
state of the art headquarters the Apple
Park or doughnuts in may look like a
doughnut and they have father made all
of their operations now hundred percent
renewable energy source and they’re
putting efforts towards making their
supply chain closed-loop so using the
resources and putting it back into the
beginning of the cycle so one of the
uses was this robot that can dismantle
iPhones at super super high speed up to
200 phones per hour and you’ll take
apart all the precious metal parts and
important parts and they’ll put that
back into the manufacturing system
another company that you just may know
called Starbucks now Starbucks has been
one of the key drivers in the coffee
market where they are setting standards
as to what it means to have sustainable
coffee they worked with a large NGO
called Conservation International to
come up with 249 indicators as to what
it means to have sustainable coffee
along the supply chain agricultural
practices distribution and so on so out
of the 500 million US dollar raised as
well as yen sustainability form that
they had raised much of that went into
sourcing sustainable coffee and some of
it also went to support farmers
development in sustainable agriculture
but the capital markets aren’t the only
developments that we have been seeing
the low market where the banking’s
actually deploy their own balance sheet
to lend have also been innovating it is
the bank’s intentions in the
transactions that I described to try to
reward companies that are looking to
improve their environmental social
governance standards so if the overall
sustainability improves then the bank’s
actually reward them with a discount in
the loan pricing and this type of
transaction has been picking up in the
last year and a half or so and large
companies olam which is the large
agricultural business Royal Philips a
health care business we nuit which is
the waste to product business as well as
DSM which is a chemicals business have
signed on because they want to
demonstrate to the financial community
that they are looking to make a
difference with their business and in
that process the CFO’s and the
treasurer’s of each of these companies
become stakeholders in the companies
movement towards becoming more
sustainable now so I just talked about
transactions that already happened but I
can also tell you we’re very far from
reaching the goals on the Paris
agreement as well as the sustainable
development goals
I will reinforce the message that you
heard earlier that we cannot continue on
a linear economy where we produce use
and waste the new economy that we’re
moving towards is called circular
economy although that economy where
you’re looking to reuse reduce and
recycle and along the way you’re looking
at extending the life of the assets and
using increasing the usage or
productivity of the assets that sit idle
think of uber think of Airbnb and all of
this requires rethinking in the
financial terms the concept of security
you see
that banks take an asset and say I will
lend you money on the back of this asset
and if you don’t pay me back I will take
this asset that may no longer hold in
concepts where ownership is unclear or
the movement of this asset as it gets
segregated to make it more nimble and to
increase the productivity also changes
the concept of security and so the banks
need to also continue innovating in
financial models to fund the circular
economy not only that in my mind
technological innovations is and should
be synonymous with sustainable
development you see the demand with
things like connected infrastructure
Internet of Things mobile connectivity
much of the demand for this is going to
be feeding directly into sustainable
development all those trillions that I
mentioned that the world needs in order
to achieve the goals that we want to
under STS and Paris agreement much of
that goes to connected infrastructure
for example where you must be able to
real-time assess is there leakage in
water is there if the energy efficiency
going down of certain assets and all of
this requires Internet of Things and one
big black box that often does not get
connected to sustainable development or
in the minds of most people for that
matter quantum computing it is the most
powerful computer out there today
far beyond supercomputers and it’s all
about being able to look at very complex
set of potential outcomes and be able to
compute that at SuperSpeed and climate
change to degree scenario pathway
looking at the best drug pathways these
are all scenario building exercises in
order to get to optimal solutions and
quantum computing is going to change the
world and we must make
sure that from day one when we look at
quantum computing and ask the technology
developers and matures and can be put
under commercial use that this is
connected to sustainable development so
all of this is happening today but it
cannot happen without people who stand
up and say I think this is important and
even though I may feel that I don’t have
the resources I don’t have the skillset
but you have to believe that you can
make a difference and these heroes and
heroines and the change makers are
actually all among us you guys are here
because you open mind that you want to
learn and you want to drive towards
change so in the context of sustainable
finance powering sustainable development
in order to help the community and the
humanity to thrive we can each go out
and talk to your banker friends your
investor friends your own company to ask
what are we doing in order to support
sustainable development to support the
Paris agreement to support the
sustainable development goals it so
happens that I was fortunate to have
been unhappy in sustainable now in
Investment Banking because that’s what
drove me to go out and find my purpose
in that please join me and join a large
community of us in driving that change
in saying there is no plan B there is no
plan of B and for us to strive we must
stand up and support the sustainable
development movement thank you [Applause]
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