The billion dollar fund targeting 25% returns from inequality and climate change
Nuveen doesn't forsake ESG goals for performance, targeting a 25% return on most investments with a particular focus on inequality and climate change.
Impact investing has mushroomed into a USD1.2 trillion ($1.9 trillion) industry, with private equity investors chasing social and environmental outcomes alongside financial returns.
New York-based Nuveen, a subsidiary of Fortune-100 pension fund the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), is one of the more prominent players in the space. It will soon finish deploying the USD218 million it raised from its first third-party capital impact fund in 2020.
Since then, it has been investing in innovative and growing businesses in the US and India that are tackling two big sustainability challenges of our time - climate change and inequality. Nuveen’s head of private equity impact Rekha Unnithan spoke with Capital Brief on a whistlestop tour of Australia as part of a global investor roadshow earlier this month.
What types of businesses fit the criteria of the impact fund?
Nuveen has been active in private equity impact investing for more than a decade, and has committed over $1 billion over the course of that period. Our thesis is rooted in two inextricable problems – climate change and inequality – and the belief that you cannot sufficiently address one without addressing the other.
