# Institutional Investors Matter In Esg Investing

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[00:00:00.000] Hello and welcome to another episode of Peer Connections, a podcast produced by the Global
[00:00:04.360] Peer Financing Association, otherwise known as GPFA. I am Brooke Gilman, Secretary of GPFA.
[00:00:10.840] GPFA is excited to bring you a special podcast today focused on ESG investing and financing
[00:00:17.020] in the North American and UK markets. This podcast was originally recorded as part of a GPFA member
[00:00:23.380] subgroup meeting on the topic, and we're very pleased to be able to share with you for the
[00:00:27.280] first time the expert content that our members benefited from during their meeting. I want to
[00:00:31.860] first introduce the moderator of the session to our listeners. Lisa Mantello is a lawyer with the
[00:00:36.760] law firm Osler, Hoskin, and Harcourt in Toronto, Canada. Lisa is a partner with Osler specializing
[00:00:42.960] in the banking and financial services sector and is also a board member for GPFA. I now will turn
[00:00:49.100] the discussion over to Lisa to introduce the expert speakers joining her. We've put together
[00:00:54.020] a panel of industry experts, and we are also very lucky and happy to have Professor Gordon Clark,
[00:01:02.180] who is a professorial fellow at St. Edmund Hall at Oxford. He's Director Emeritus at the Smith
[00:01:09.480] School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and Co-Director of the Oxford
[00:01:14.360] Zurich Research Program. He is the Independent Chair of the IP Group's Ethics and ESG Committee,
[00:01:21.220] and he's an advisor to a handful of fintech startups in the UK and the US. He's been an
[00:01:27.200] employer nominated trustee on the Oxford Staff Pension Scheme for the past 10 years and has
[00:01:32.380] advised pension funds and related institutions on the design and delivery of DB and DC pensions. So
[00:01:38.660] thank you very much, Gordon, for joining us this morning. Next, I'd like to introduce you to
[00:01:42.940] Timothy Hughes, who is a partner at Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt. So Tim leads the capital markets
[00:01:49.860] tax practice at Osler. And he has been involved in structuring ESG investments in Canada
[00:01:56.780] for capital markets. Next, I'd like to introduce you to Michael Gimmes, who is a partner also at
[00:02:02.740] Osler. And Michael is the co-chair of Osler's Capital Markets Group. He's nationally and
[00:02:07.660] internationally recognized as a leading capital markets and cross-border corporate lawyer in
[00:02:12.140] Canada. Michael has also been at the forefront of structuring the ESG investing in Canada.
[00:02:19.420] Next, I would like to introduce Oliver Moyer, who is a partner at Slaughter & May, and Ollie
[00:02:25.620] is a member of the Infrastructure, Energy, and Natural Resources Practice Group, and
[00:02:30.280] is also an expert at ESG investing from an infrastructure perspective.
[00:02:34.320] And lastly, I'd like to introduce you to Azadeh Nasiri, who's also a partner at Slaughter
[00:02:39.100] & May, and who has a broad financing practice covering acquisition and general bank financings,
[00:02:45.040] and also has significant experience with ESG investing from a financial perspective.
[00:02:50.380] So thank you very much to all the speakers for joining us.
[00:02:53.620] And I'd like to just start by saying that ESG investing has really become quite significant
[00:02:58.240] to pension plans worldwide and to beneficial owners everywhere.
[00:03:03.480] So that's why we're having this session.
[00:03:05.100] There's been quite a demand for people to speak about ESG.
[00:03:08.180] And I think I'd like to call on both Michael to speak to ESG investings from a North American
[00:03:14.820] perspective and as a day to speak about it from the UK market and the European perspective.
[00:03:20.910] I'll kick off if that's okay. Thanks so much, Lisa. The last five to seven years,
[00:03:25.430] we've seen a huge growth in ESG debt financing in UK and Europe more generally. And when we
[00:03:32.850] use the term ESG financing, what we mean is an umbrella term that covers