Webinar: MOBILIST challenges investors to think differently about listed markets in EMDEs

Impact investors need not avoid public markets. In fact, investing in publicly listed instruments in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) can present unique opportunities to generate systemic impact.

This assertion that investors can generate significant and additional impact through listed instruments, especially when investing in EMDEs, was one of the key insights shared during a recent MOBILIST webinar.

The webinar, entitled Investing with Impact in EMDE Public Markets: The Importance of Additionality, was co-hosted by the Impact Investing Institute and shared the findings of a MOBILIST Research Report by the same name.

The report points out that while allocations by impact investors into public debt and equity roughly doubled from 6.4% in 2017 to 13.4% in 2022, it was still dwarfed by the 81% invested in private market and real assets.

This preference for private markets is partly due to concerns over additionality. The report highlights some of the challenges that keep impact investors from investing in EMDE public markets: These markets tend to be smaller, less liquid, subject to policy and regulatory barriers, and less well-covered by brokers, banks, analysts, and rating agencies.

However, MOBILIST argues that these characteristics make EMDE capital markets the perfect venue for impact investors. In these markets, impact investors can have a systemic impact by not only building companies but also building markets as a public good.

Key moments from the webinar, moderated by Jamie Broderick, Deputy Chair, at Impact Investing Institute (II) include:

• Chris Eleftheriades, Executive Director, Lion’s Head Global Partners and MOBILIST Research Lead, provided an overview of the research paper, sharing insights on ensuring additionality when investing in public markets.
• Martin Lemoine, Head of Agribusiness, Asian Development Bank, provided an overview of the Bank’s participation in the initial public offering (IPO) of CIMORY, an Indonesian dairy company, and how it achieved additionality through this investment.
• Matthew Hodgkinson, Founding Partner and Portfolio Manager at Confluence Investors, discussed the company’s experiences of investing in public markets in frontier and emerging economies and its views on the opportunities these markets present.
• Maria Smith, managing director and Chief Impact Officer at British International Investment (BII), shared BII’s approach to additionality and how it considers market creation and capital market development when evaluating the impact of its investments.
• Louis Bourgeois, Senior Impact Manager, BlueOrchard, discussed impact considerations and how the company incorporates them in portfolio construction in the fixed income investment space.

Watch a full recording of the webinar below or on YouTube.