COURSE NUMBER: MBA 292T.2

COURSE TITLE: Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Nadja Guenster

E-MAIL ADDRESS: guenster@haas.berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION:

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Thursdays, 7:30AM – 9:30AM

Please note: this course meets for three semesters: Spring = 2 units, Fall = 2 units, and Spring = 2 units. Students must commit to the class for the full 3-semester sequence.

PREREQUISITE(S): MBA203

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
As the first and only student-led investment fund of its scale ($1.4M+) within a leading business school focused on both social and financial returns, the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund (HSRIF) seeks to achieve lofty goals while offering unique student opportunities and challenges.

HSRIF seeks to contribute to the field of social investing by defining and exploring new ideas around unlocking hidden value based on companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. As such, Fund Principals believe that the less conventional their thinking, the more innovative their approach, the less correlation with the activity of other established SRI funds, the greater the potential to achieve this goal.

HSRIF Principals are MBA and MFE students interested in finance and corporate responsibility. At a high level, the investment philosophy guiding the Fund and its Principals is to achieve a balance between financial and social/environmental performance:

· Financial: Valuation metrics, firm size and growth, size of market, competitive position, strength of management, recent performance, etc.

· Social/Environmental: customer benefits from using the product/service, sustainability principles, supply chain practices, employee treatment, etc.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Nadja Guenster is an assistant professor of Finance at Maastricht University and a visiting scholar at the Haas-Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on socially responsible investing, CSR, corporate governance, and asset price bubbles. Nadja obtained a Ph.D. from RSM Erasmus University. Her studies have been published in various practitioner-oriented outlets, such as the Financial Analysts Journal, European Financial Management and the Journal of Asset Management. Her research has been awarded the 2005 Moskowitz Prize for best quantitative study in the SRI domain, and the 2005 European Finance & Sustainability Research Award, and the 2011 Crowell Second Prize by PanAgora Asset Management.