Miscellaneous
Sustainability’s new frontier: Asia
Sustainable investing once seemed like a laughing matter to some executives in Asia. Literally, says Billy Hwan, a portfolio manager for Parnassus Asia Fund (PAFSX), which has $10 million in assets. He says many Asian company managers used to laugh in his face when he would ask about sustainable Read More...
Microsoft Strikes Partnership With Banks on Blockchain Tech
Microsoft Inc. has pulled ahead of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, International Business Machines Corp., and Amazon.com Inc. in the race for supremacy in operating other companies’ blockchains. Microsoft and R3, a consortium of 43 financial institutions, have formed a strategic Read More...
Mobile Phones Promise to Bring Banking to the World’s Poorest
The rapid proliferation of mobile platforms and the digital services that move across them are transforming the world in countless ways. Overnight, these technologies create billionaires and business models so beautifully unique and freakishly inspired that we call them “unicorns.” But Read More...
Wall Street goes big on Bitcoin tech
The mainstreaming of bitcoin tech continues. Nearly 500 suit-clad Wall Streeters, regulators, professors, and tech execs gathered at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s attended first ever single-issue public symposium, on blockchain, Tuesday in midtown Manhattan. Earlier Tuesday DTCC, Read More...
Angel investing gets a shot in the arm in the UK
The nation’s small businesses can expect a wave of capital from a new generation of investors following the launch of a campaign to more than double the number of active angels backing UK firms by 2019.The new Become An Angel campaign, which will launch on Wednesday at the House of Commons, plans Read More...
Starbucks will start donating 100% of its unused food to those in need
Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it will donate 100% of the leftover food from its 7,600 stores to food banks across the U.S. In a bid to fight hunger and food waste, the coffee-giant has teamed up with nonprofit organization Feeding America and Food Donation Connection to donate perishable Read More...
These Startups Want To Bring Surplus Food To Those In Need
"We sell ugly fruit and vegetables," says Ben Simon, CEO of Imperfect Produce. "Or as we like to call it, cosmetically challenged." Semantics aside, mountains of food go to waste each year because it's a bit lumpy or misshapen. Meanwhile, public health officials have found that more than 14% of Read More...
Food surpluses are inevitable in our consumer-led society. Food waste isn’t
If they think about it at all, most people think of food waste, or surplus, as the “reduced to clear” section in the supermarket. But that is just a tiny fraction of what exists. The truth is that most food surpluses in the supply chain never even reach our supermarket shelves. Let me Read More...
A Bitcoin-Style Currency for Central Banks
The Bank of England asked researchers to invent a digital currency with a more centralized design. by Tom Simonite March 10, 2016 Sponsored by The digital currency Bitcoin was designed to be independent of any government—a feature that also limits its mainstream appeal. Now researchers have Read More...
You’ll eat bugs. These investors are betting millions on it
Greg Sewitz and Gabi Lewis are used to people laughing at them. Three years ago the two college roommates ordered two boxes of live crickets off the Internet, the sort you might feed your pet iguana. They promptly shoved the two shoebox-sized containers of insects into the freezer. Later, they Read More...