Millions of people around the world are saving money to meet personal goals – funding a comfortable retirement, saving for someone’s education, or buying a home, to name a few.

The funds to support these goals are safeguarded by institutional investors – pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, and asset managers – who invest in companies for the prospect of growth and security. These savers, their communities, and the institutions that support them make up the global investment value chain, and each benefit from long-term decisions in different ways:

Savers have long term goals such as retirement or providing for the next generation

Asset Owners invest to match the long-term goals of their beneficiaries or constituents

Asset Managers align their horizons, incentives, and goals to those of asset owners, whose money they manage

Companies make multi-year investments in new markets, facilities, or products in order to create value for stakeholders

Communities benefit from companies' long term decisions, which create jobs, innovation, and wealth

Policy and regulation shapes global discourse and prompts market behaviors to shift toward the long term

Data shows that long-term-oriented investors deliver superior performance, and long-term-oriented companies outperform in terms of revenue, earnings, and job creation. But despite overwhelming evidence of the superiority of long-term investments, short-term pressures are hard to avoid. A majority of corporate executives agree that longer time horizons for business decisions would improve performance, and yet half say they would delay value-creating projects if it would mean missing quarterly earnings targets.

Growth icon

90% Executives who agree that longer time horizons would improve performance

pie chart icon

50% Executives who would delay value-creating projects if it meant missing quarterly earnings targets

Today, the balance remains skewed toward short-term financial targets at the expense of long-term value creation.

FCLTGlobal’s mission is to focus capital on the long term to support a sustainable and prosperous economy. We are a non-profit organization whose members are leading companies and investors worldwide that develops actionable research and tools to drive long-term value creation for savers and communities.

We Drive Change Through a Focus on Key Areas

governance icon

Boards of directors as the key to long-term value creation

Strong governance provides the foundation for success. Boards of directors with long-term orientations create an environment in which management can take a long-term approach.

View Resources
incentives icon

Incentives to support long-term goals

Alignment of incentives over time and across the investment value chain is critical to future outperformance.

View Resources
engagement icon

Investor-corporate engagement

Engagement between companies and their shareholders on their long-term strategies provides mutual understanding and confidence to pursue shared goals.

View Resources

Metrics that drive long-term performance

Metrics, both financial and non-traditional, that are consistent, comparable, and reliable enable market participants to evaluate sustainable long-term value creation.

View Resources
policy icon

Policy environment

Policy and regulation shapes global discourse and public perception about key issues, and ideally prompts market behaviors to shift toward the long term.

View Resources