Resources
We conduct original research on the causes of short-term business decisions and work to find practical solutions.
Innovation, Climate | Article
5 October 2018 - The fifth annual Milken Institute Asia Summit, held from 12-14 September in Singapore, gathered global leaders to address the trends, innovations, and disruptions transforming the Asia-Pacific region, and provided actionable steps to effectively prepare for the inevitable transition. The Milken Institute hosts annual events that bring together the top minds from every industry and sector to find collaborative solutions to common problems. FCLTGlobal and many of our Member companies were fortunate enough to take part in the annual Asian gathering, including in an off-the-record roundtable on...
Risk and Resilience | Article
25 September 2018 - Investors often face a challenge of meeting long-term obligations and maintaining the support of their constituents along the way. In particular, they need investment strategies to meet their long-term obligations, but current risk communications, behaviors, and measurements can interfere. FCLTGlobal, with its Members, is developing practical tools to address the issue of balancing long- and short-term risks. Part of the process includes interviews with experts in the area of assessing, managing, and planning for investment risk. Below is the first in a series of discussions, featuring...
Risk and Resilience | Article
10 September 2018 - FCLTGlobal’s research is designed to find practical solutions that encourage farsighted decision making within the investment industry. The work we do is primarily intended to explore how every actor on the investment value chain – corporations, asset owners, and asset managers – can put theory into action and reorient themselves and their counterparts toward the long-term. In order to arrive at the “how”, however, we must also explore why investors continue to make short-term decisions that sacrifice long-term value. A team of researchers at the University...
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3 September 2018 - In the newest episode of the acclaimed podcast series “Capital Allocators“, CEO Sarah Williamson sat down with host Ted Seides to discuss the current state of FCLTGlobal and status quo of global long-term investment. The Capital Allocators podcast is a weekly series of conversations with leaders in money management about the people and process behind capital allocation. Mr. Seides is the founder of Hidden Brook Investments, LLC. Over the the course of the discussion, Sarah shared about the path that brought her to FCLTGlobal, the issues...
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30 August 2018 - What makes an investor quintessentially “long-term”? This question is at the core of FCLTGlobal’s mission and research agenda. Together with our partners at CEM Benchmarking Inc., we surveyed 18 large global asset owners responsible for a combined $1.6 Trillion in assets, about how they act to realize their long-term goals and what outcomes they’re seeing as a result. Our inspiration for probing these particular topics came from the 2015 Long-Term Portfolio Guide, published by the Focusing Capital on the Long Term initiative. Although the survey size is small, it...
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27 August 2018 - Each of our research projects is supported by working groups attended by our Members, giving them the opportunity to stay abreast of our current thinking while shaping and contributing to our work.
Earnings Guidance | Article
1 August 2018 - Each stakeholder along the investment value chain must play a role in shifting to longer-term decision making. Today’s investment community, in large part, has become fixated on hitting immediate goals, losing sight of savers’ broader objectives in the process. An effective way for both companies and investors to correct this imbalance is to avoid short-term dialogue, including practices like offering and evaluating quarterly earnings guidance, and instead center their dialogue on strategies that build support for long-term growth. Building on our earlier work on the investor-corporate dialogue, FCLTGlobal...
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23 July 2018 - FCLTGlobal discussed private equity last month in London, where CEO Sarah Williamson joined a panel hosted by Schroders, led by Gavin Ralston, Head of Thought Leadership and Official Institutions.
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15 May 2018 - National (and often international) attention was focused on the unveiling of the White House’s revamped tax plan for much of 2017. Regardless of your political leaning, the impact of the bill on US companies was undeniable; the CBO has predicted a $300B+ benefit to US corporations within a decade of the bill’s passage. This impact raised a major question: what will these firms do with their newfound capital? While this question remains largely unanswered, new data from Q1 earnings season suggests some of this cash is headed...
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24 April 2018 - Let’s start with the facts: it is critical to be clear about what we know and what we do not. Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria and Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim started 2018 Focusing Capital on the Long Term Summit by administering a quiz on many facets of long-term investing to dispel misconceptions and provide participants with foundational knowledge to apply for the rest of the day. This questionnaire, created by Serafeim and Nohria, explores the incentives, institutions, and behaviors that give rise to short-termism....
Investor-Corporate Engagement | Article
13 April 2018 - Spring is in the air, baseball has begun here at FCLTGlobal headquarters in Boston, and the public company earnings reporting season is upon us – thus begins that familiar, yet often tedious, quarterly dance done by companies and the analysts that cover them. The quarterly earnings call looms large on most corporate calendars, regularly consuming significant amounts of time to prepare, but are investors and companies making the best use of this venue for regular interaction? Many of the most commonly asked questions on earnings conference...
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12 March 2018 - On 28 February, the 2018 Focusing Capital on the Long Term Summit convened more than 150 members and select business leaders in a closed-door event to address the problem of short-term behaviors in capital markets.