On Tuesday evening, after a day of panels on responsible capital, some 1,500 investment professionals will be invited to a networking reception at an Amsterdam beach club. They will have earned it. A fund manager's ticket to the twentieth-anniversary conference of the Principles for Responsible Investment costs $2,305, plus Dutch VAT, plus the flight, plus the hotel. Responsibility has never been cheap. It has become very popular. When Kofi Annan launched the six Principles in 2006, about fifty institutions signed. Today the PRI counts 5,261 signatories, who claim to manage $139.6 trillion, all of it pledged to take environmental, social and governance issues into account. One might expect the planet to have noticed. A very forgiving exam. The Principles are, in the PRI's own words, 'voluntary and aspirational', offering 'a menu of possible actions'. Nobody was ever thrown out of a restaurant for ordering only the bread. To stay a signatory, an investor needs a policy covering more...
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