Burgess COMMENTARY
There is good news and there is bad news here. I agree with Astrid about feeling suspicious and I agree with Ajit about giving Morgan Stanley some credit for this. For Morgan Stanley this is low risk. quite low cost and very good PR. For those of us seriously interested in some radical reform of the way investment resources are allocated, this may either be the start of something very important or absolutely nothing. In due course my metrics initiative will start to make their TBL performance much clearer. For the moment it is worth noting the financial scale of this commitment with the total financial resources and leverage of Morgan Stanley. The commitment seems to be in the order of $2 billion over a period of five years. This compares with total assets of $781 billion at December 31, 2012, a year in which they made no money for their shareholders. Net tangible assets are around $52 billion. This from http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MS 2012 was a bad year. They made little money, but in previous years (2011 and 2010) their net income had been around $6 billion. My own perspective on the leadership of Wall Street (the financial community) and the corporate business community is that there is, in fact, a huge change in the thinking of a lot of the CEOs compared to 20 years ago, but there is relatively little change in the core metrics of their organizations so that while the CEO can talk the talk, it is very difficult to get the whole of the organization to walk the talk. This is the main reason that I believe something like TrueValueMetrics and Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) is absolutely vital to change corporate behavior in a meaningful way. Let's follow this and see what emerges Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
Peter Burgess

Morgan Stanley Establishes Institute for Sustainable Investing Institute to Drive Capital Toward Investments Supporting Global Sustainability and Advance Innovation and Scholarship to Broaden Market-Based Approach

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--November 01, 2013-- Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO James Gorman today announced the establishment of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. The Institute will build on Morgan Stanley's ongoing work to advance market-based solutions to economic, social and environmental challenges, operating from the foundational principle that sustainable investment can only achieve significant scale by attracting a broad range of private sector capital. Through product innovation, thought leadership and scholarship aimed at expanding opportunities for sustainable investing, the Institute will seek to drive capital toward investments promoting sustainable economic growth.

The Institute for Sustainable Investing will pursue three focus areas: financial products and solutions that enable clients to invest in sustainability-focused strategies seeking risk-adjusted financial returns; groundbreaking thought leadership that will help mobilize capital toward sustainable investing opportunities; and strategic partnerships with the public, private and nonprofit sectors designed to build capacity and best practices within the field of scalable sustainable investing.

The Institute's first major commitments include:

• -- Setting a goal of $10 billion in total client assets through Morgan Stanley's Investing with Impact Platform in the next five years. By developing new products, innovative thematic portfolios and sustainable
• investing thought leadership, this platform will meet rapidly increasing client demand for opportunities to invest for positive environmental and social impact in addition to the goal of achieving risk-adjusted financial returns.
• -- Creating new products - in coordination with Morgan Stanley Investment Management's Long-Only and Alternative Investment Partners businesses - in which positive social and/or environmental impact is a core part of the underlying investment strategy.
• -- Establishing an annual Sustainable Investing Fellowship program at Columbia Business School that will enable a select group of graduate students to pursue thought leadership in sustainable investing, coupled with an internship at Morgan Stanley to gain hands-on experience in product innovation, thought leadership and investment strategy.
• -- Investing $1 billion in a sustainable communities initiative to provide rapid access to capital for the preservation and enhancement of quality affordable housing units that are at risk of deteriorating into uninhabitable conditions or becoming unaffordable to low- and moderate-income households. The initiative will also seek to drive the integration of affordable housing with access to health care, healthy foods and other vital services. Morgan Stanley is partnering with leading community groups, including the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NCB Capital Impact, on the sustainable communities initiative.

Terry Simonette, President and CEO of NCB Capital Impact, said, 'The sustainable communities initiative is the type of transformative investment that will help ensure the financing so desperately needed to provide access to healthy foods and other critical resources in our poorest communities. We are proud to partner with Morgan Stanley on this effort.'

Through these and future initiatives, the Institute for Sustainable Investing will further Morgan Stanley's commitment to providing individual and institutional investors with products and strategies that address sustainability challenges at scale.

Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO James Gorman launched the Institute in a speech at Columbia Business School today. Mr. Gorman said: 'Morgan Stanley is in a unique position to harness the capital markets to help address the most pressing challenges facing society today, connecting governments, investors and businesses with the capital to execute at scale. Our philosophy is clear -- the most effective solutions to sustainability challenges are those that can be brought to scale. Our clients are increasingly turning their attention to what it takes to secure the lasting and safe supplies of food, energy, water and shelter necessary for sustainable prosperity.'

Mr. Gorman will chair the Institute's Advisory Board, which will include individuals from the private and nonprofit sectors with expertise in various aspects of sustainable investing including finance, policy and management (for a list of members, see the note to editors below). Audrey Choi, who leads Morgan Stanley's Global Sustainable Finance group, will be CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Investing. 'As the world's population grows toward 9 billion and beyond, meeting the exponentially growing needs for quality education, healthcare, housing and security will far outstrip current models of business, government or philanthropy, ' said Ms. Choi. 'The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing is committed to playing a catalytic role in forging innovative cross-sector partnerships that develop solutions to mobilize capital efficiently and effectively to meet these challenges at scale.'

Learn more about the Institute at www.morganstanley.com/sustainableinvesting.

• Advisory Board

• -- James Gorman (Chairman), Chairman and CEO, Morgan Stanley
• -- Bob Aiken, CEO, Feeding America
• -- Laurence Belfer, CEO, Belfer Management
• -- Dr. Steven Corwin, CEO, New York Presbyterian Hospital
• -- David Gergen, Director, Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy
• School of Government, Harvard University
• -- Dr. Harish Hande, Managing Director, SELCO-India
• -- Jeffrey Hollender, Co-founder, Seventh Generation and Hollender
• Sustainable Brands
• -- Karen Elliott House, Former Publisher, The Wall Street Journal
• -- Mindy Lubber, President, Ceres
• -- Eric Mindich, Founder, Eton Park Capital Management
• -- Luther Ragin, Jr., President and CEO, Global Impact Investing Network
• -- Rey Ramsey, Former President and CEO, TechNet and One Economy Corporation