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The New “Socially Responsible Investing” Landscape

Back in my day as a stockbroker, the term for buying stocks in companies that avoided things like tobacco, animal testing, and corporate irresponsibility, was known as socially responsible investing. Now the term is ESG: environmental, social, and governance, and the values of those such-themed assets under management are growing fast and are projected to climb to more than $50 trillion or 1/3 of the projected global assets by 2025 due to strong demand. However, our next guest says that due to the broad interpretation and lack of a universally agreed definition, returns on these portfolios can vastly differ.

Mike Switzer interviews Susie Wang, a chartered financial analyst with Dividend Assets Capital in Ridgeland, SC. She is also a member of the SC Chapter of the CFA Society.

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After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.