Finance sector experts discussed the role of finance in responding to the war in Ukraine in a special joint event hosted with the CFA UK‘s Scottish Committee, focusing on the need to respond to the energy supply shock, the “economic war” being waged against Russia and the options open to investors.
On Wednesday 16th March, Lord John Alderdice, a key figure in the Northern Ireland Peace Process and Director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, Jeremy Lawson of abrdn, Helen Thomas of Blonde Money and Graham C. Cook, CFA of the Environment Agency Pension Fund joined our event ‘Responding to the War in Ukraine: Ethical Finance at a Time of Crisis’.
Lord John Alderdice opened the event by emphasising the need for finance to play a role in securing a just – and peaceful – world: a sentiment all the more acute in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The shadow of the conflict underpinned Jeremy Lawson, Chief Economist at abrdn’s opening intervention, where he explained that the conflict has highlighted that central banks are behind the policy curve: they have few policy levers left with which to respond to the conflict and the resultant energy supply shock.
Helen Thomas of Blonde Money echoed these sentiments, as she proceeded to unpack the finance (and UK’s) policy response to the conflict in Ukraine. She explained that the last few weeks had, in fact, laid bare two wars that are happening in parallel: a land war, and an economic war that goes beyond mere sanctions. Finance has become another front on a complex war, and no investor can truly be neutral as a result. This was a position that was echoed by Lord Alderdice, who cited the difficulties of aligning private financial flows with broader geopolitics and policy as the conflict in Ukraine unfolds.
The question remains, however: what investors can therefore do in response to the conflict? Whilst there might be pressure to divest, as Graham Cook commented, the market isn’t necessarily there. In fact, for many investors, their Russia-based holdings had been relatively low due to existing governance concerns – many of those with robust sustainability and governance policies were simply not deeply invested in Russia, in contrast with some of the kneejerk divestments of recent weeks.
Jeremy Lawson suggested that the conflict is ultimately symbolic of a tendency towards fragmentation that has been in place for a decade, but could end up strengthening the NATO alliance: the decrease in globalisation over the past decade has been underlined by the conflict but its impact is not linear. We could, for example, see climate change policy undermined by return to coal, or see the flexibility of EU ETS promote renewables as source of energy security as the war unfolds.
As Helen Thomas ultimately argued, when thinking about the war in Ukraine we need to be mindful of longer term history when we think about the moral and practical steps the finance sector needs to take during this crisis. Both Helen Thomas and Jeremy Lawson were keen to point to political economy as a fundamental driver of investing, with formal modelling a crucial potential aid to decision-making. There was broad agreement that China is key, not just in terms of the effectiveness of the economic war now being waged against Russia, but on climate action and the shape of any reshuffle of the geopolitical order provoked by this war.
John Alderdice was interviewed about the event on BBC Radio Scotland following the event; you can listen here.
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