White Oak Global Advisors, a global alternative asset manager, adopted Impact Rate of Return, a comprehensive impact analytics system provided by Global Impact.
Global Impact, led by its president, Howard W. Buffett, will guide the effort as White Oak’s newest advisor. As an author and professor, Buffett is an expert in impact measurement, management and analysis, and will be collaborating with White Oak’s head of ESG and impact, Terésa Cutter, to develop impact metrics relevant to the sustainable finance disclosure regulation (SFDR).
Global Impact is an advisory firm that has been serving public, private and philanthropic sector organizations for more than a decade.
“We are excited to welcome Global Impact as an advisor, given Howard’s well-regarded expertise in the space,” Roksana Ciurysek-Gedir, chairperson of White oak’s impact advisory board and consultant to White Oak, said. “Global Impact and White Oak are both longstanding players and active participants in the ESG and impact marketplace, and I’m certain it will be a fruitful partnership.”
The SFDR is designed to help institutional asset owners and retail clients understand, compare and monitor the sustainability characteristics of investment funds by standardizing sustainability disclosures. Under the SFDR, firms must make both firm and product-level disclosures about the integration of sustainability risks, the consideration of adverse sustainability impacts, the promotion of environmental or social factors and sustainable investment objectives.
“With Howard’s innovative and multi-dimensional approach to performance measurement and management, we are now even better positioned to offer reporting solutions that are SFDR-aligned, as well as provide greater transparency and measurability around the impact of White Oak’s investments,” Cutter said.
White Oak (together with and through its financing affiliates) has invested $4.2 billion in ESG-aligned investments since 2013.
“White Oak is ahead of the curve when it comes to building ESG solutions within private debt markets,” Buffett said. “I look forward to working with such an established team of advisors and to helping guide the company’s ESG and impact efforts.”
