This week on China Corner Office, Chris Marquis talks with Wayne Silby and Guo Peiyuan, the co-founders of Syntao, the Beijing-based sustainability consulting and investing firm. Wayne is also the founding chair of the $35 billion ESG investing pioneer Calvert. Wayne and Peiyuan discuss how in the last 30 years, green finance and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing has gone from a fringe topic to the mainstream globally, and how in the last decade the topic has also taken off in China. Syntao has actively shaped how this field emerged in China, and Wayne and Peiyuan also reflect on how they have worked with Chinese companies and leaders to convince them of the importance of sustainability, how the top-down role of the government in supporting corporate responsibility in China is different than in the West, and how investors around the world now consider environmental factors as important indicators of companies’ long-term risk.
