Road to Resilience: An investor action plan for an adaptive and sustainable economy Investor Group on Climate Change
General Electric was the most valuable company in the world in the mid 2000’s. Years of intensive focus on financial engineering through complex accounting practices to smooth out earnings presented a façade of financial stability. This focus, and the resultant culture, led GE’s management to ignore underlying problems in their core industrial and financial services businesses leading to an 80% decline in the stock price between September 2007 and March 2008. Optically, their financial data was impressive, but building a resilient portfolio is about identifying fragilities beyond the financial statements and the risks they pose. The answer lies in a good old-fashioned process of sector and community mobilisation. Governments, development agencies and business representative organisations should partner with others in the geographical area and facilitate discussion on the effects of…