The December issue of the Capital Markets Law Journal is entirely dedicated to the topic of sustainable investment management in a changing world. Danny Busch (Radboud University) and Iris Chiu (University College London), served as guest editors of this special issue. The entire issue is freely accessible via the following link: Volume 20 Issue 4 | Capital Markets Law Journal | Oxford Academic.
Over the past few years, many publications have been devoted to legal and regulatory aspects of sustainable investment management, but this is the first time that the theme has been studied from a global and comparative law perspective. This issue contains a total of 10 contributions regarding the regulatory and private law rules and standards that investment managers must take into account. In order of appearance, this special edition includes contributions on the following jurisdictions: the UK, the European Union (EU), Switzerland, Canada, the USA, India, China, Singapore, Australia, and Japan.
The special issue appears at a turning point. Since Donald Trump began his second term as President of the USA in January 2025, the geopolitical climate has undoubtedly changed. This also impacts the sustainable finance agenda, to begin with, of course, in the USA itself. In several states, it has now become illegal for investment managers to consider sustainability in their investment decisions. The idea here is that asset managers have only one goal: to generate as much return as possible for the client, whether that client is a retail investor or a large pension fund. The developments on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean also have important implications for the European sustainability agenda. Europe no longer shies away from using a weakening or in any event the simplification of sustainability rules in its negotiations with the USA on trade tariffs.