Last year’s Impact Week in Singapore laid out a bold vision for a “well-being” economy that could redefine East-West relations around “love” rather than power. This year’s confab of financiers, businesspeople, scientists, statespeople and academics will explore what infrastructure is needed to make that vision real.
“We are convening to do something audacious and overdue: to treat love, the thing every one of us already works from, if we are honest, as infrastructure,” wroteLuis Alvarado Martinez of NO.17 Foundation, which co-convenes Impact week with TPC (Tsao Pao Chee).
On the agenda in September: Al Goreof Generation Investment Management, Mark Dalio of OceanX,Chavalit Frederick Tsao of TPCandGrace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment of Singapore, as well as Laurence Lienof Asia Philanthropy Circle, Margarita Louis-Dreyfus of Louis-Dreyfus Group, Tharald Nustadof Katapult and Patti Chu of Mana Impact Partners
Martinez says that in a world running on fear-based decisions (e.g. the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz, the energy scarcity panic, the AI arms race, the renewed appetite for walls) “a little love-based thinking is not naïve. It is strategic.” Love, he says, “is the one variable the fear-based models cannot price.”
The five-day festival’s four tracks include capital, energy and nature, human development, and community and culture. Impact Week will feature the vocabulary of the next era, says Martinez: regeneration, coherence, stewardship, flourishing and consciousness, and the audacity to acknowledge “that the systems we built are no longer fit for the lives we actually want to live.”
Singapore’s own asset owners are charting the course.
On Thursday, Sept. 10, ImpactAlpha’sDennis Price will convening “LP = Leadership Potential: How Singapore’s capital owners are finding alpha in impact,” with Diana Watson of Tsao Family Office, Eliza Foo of Temasek, Hareesh Nair of TPC and Carol Liew of ECCA Family Foundation.
Foo, who leads the impact investing team at Temasek, the $400 billion global investment company, says Singapore plays a unique role as a trusted hub – neutral, well-regulated and steeped in Asia’s tradition of family-owned companies that operate with a generational perspective
“There’s a natural orientation towards long-term, patient capital. It thinks about generations. It thinks about long-term stewardship,” Foo told ImpactAlpha’sDavid Bank on a July Agent of Impact podcast
With $400 billion in assets, Temasek leans into emerging markets, climate adaptation and ‘sustainable living’ (podcast)
With their supply chains, their manufacturing and their operations, family business leaders in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and other economic hubs in Asia are seeking to future-proof their businesses and the communities they serve
“We believe family businesses will ultimately play a central role in the capital stack behind impact in Asia, given their multi-generational perspective, tolerance for complexity, and deep roots in the real economy,” Hareesh Nair, chief investment officer of Tsao Pao Chee Group, said at the SFi Impact Summit in June, an annual gathering of Asia-based asset owners hosted by Sustainable Finance Initiative in Hong Kong
Asia’s family businesses drive impact in their operations as well as their investments
Ecca Family Foundation, linked to the family behind global jewelry brand Pandora, makes catalytic impact investments in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based Tsao Family Office is working to bring more family offices in Singapore and across Asia into impact investing
“I think you can make money doing this,” Tsao’s Bryan Goh said on a March Agent of Impact podcast. “You’re finding something that’s risky where traditional capital can’t see the endpoint, but we can take a longer-term view.”
Tsao Family Office builds a theory to go with its practice of impact investing (podcast)
Families are rethinking inherited investment and philanthropic mandates to put patient, multi-generational capital to work across business, investment and impact.
Also on the Thursday of Impact Week, Amit Bouri of the Global Impact Investing Network, will be joined by Alexis du Roy de Blicquy of Family Business Network, Nan Li Collinsof UN Trade & Development, Onur Erenof Light Eagle, Richard Azarniaof The Good Investors,Sonia Tsao of Canopy Generations Fund / Tsao Family Foundation and Richie Eu of Eu Yan Sang Ventures, at “Mandate Redesign: Family Capital Working from Inherited Mandates.”
