Cooking the Books podcast: What if your investments aren’t as ethical as you thought?

Is it possible to make money without making the world a worse place? Photo / 123RF

Each week BusinessDesk and the NZ Herald’s Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it’s how to invest smartly, while accusations of greenwashing run rampant. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Something I get asked about a lot is ethical investing, and whether it’s possible to make money without making the world a worse place.

My answer is a resounding yes. I truly believe that many of the best investments, with good profits, are ethical ones.

It’s tricky though, because many companies would like to be seen to be doing good without putting in the work.

A recent one that surprised me was Vanguard, a giant in the investing industry, getting into hot water with the Australian authorities.

Australian regulators said Vanguard’s Ethically Conscious Global Aggregate Bond Index Fund was actually greenwashing, because of investments associated with the fossil fuel industry.

Meanwhile, local fund manager Pathfinder recently ditched all of its investments in BlackRock, after the global asset manager appointed Saudi Aramco’s chief executive to its board.

Pathfinder CEO John Berry said “this undermines everything BlackRock has said and done over the past five years about it leading the transition to a lower carbon world”.

It can be a minefield, and no investor wants to feel tricked.

So here’s how to figure it out so you get the best bang for your buck, while sleeping well at night.

For the latest podcast, I talked to John Berry from Pathfinder.

For the interview, listen to the podcast here.

• If you have a question about this podcast, or a question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here, and Twitter here.

• Listen to the full interview on the Cooking the Books podcast. You can subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.