Good reads – our curated news review of the month October 2020
News

Globalance Invest stands for sustainable investments. But how do you actually determine how sustainable a company is? Werner Hedrich, managing director of the asset manager, explains the company's investment strategy and his doubts that banks can also offer sustainable investments with a clear conscience (German article).

After deducting debts, the total assets of Germans at the end of the second quarter amounted to 4,722 billion euros. This is 236 billion euro more than in the previous quarter. More and more of these assets are being saved: according to estimates, the savings ratio is likely to rise to around 16 per cent this year, compared with 10.9 per cent last year. The only problem is that there are neither relevant interest rates nor is it stimulating the economy (German article).

If it is so difficult to determine sustainability, how difficult is it to measure its impact? Assessing the greenhouse gas emissions of companies is not enough when it comes to real impact investments. Assessing them against the UN's seventeen sustainable development goals is more accurate (German article).

Investors like venture capitalists are always on the lookout for the next unicorn. In addition to their own research methods, artificial intelligence could soon help here. The experiment shows: Based on just three databases, the machine beats the average investor (German article).

The reasons for reward-based crowdfunding are manifold. The possibility of combining funding with market research is one; the publicity effect of the research is another. What is new is that increasingly large, established companies have also discovered this form of crowdfunding for themselves.