Social Finance

The walls of Seattle’s Pioneer Square Historic District have long featured canvases splashed with elevating colors and dramatic shapes. Yet this neighborhood’s rich artistic and cultural tradition experienced a slump in the 1990s when market forces drove artists out of the area at an alarming rate.

For the second consecutive year, BNY Mellon, a global leader in investment management and investment services, has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) and, for the third consecutive year, to the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (DJSI North America).

The origins of financial services were good. Banks, insurance companies and investment houses used the power of the collective to pool and manage money, offering the customer a better deal than had they been acting alone.

People have been talking for years about the “valley of death” between seed money and growth capital that confronts and sometimes swallows up social enterprises. Now we’re finally starting to see a critical mass of funders willing to fill the gap with capital combinations designed for enterprises that maximize social and environmental value.

CEMEX named #16 in Fortune’s Change the World list, a ranking that recognizes 50 companies worldwide that have made a sizable impact on major global social or environmental problems as part of their competitive strategy. CEMEX is the only Latin-American based company included and the only company from the construction materials sector.