Jones Starts Nonprofit to Save Companies From Themselves
Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones says American corporate culture has “ripped the humanity” out of companies.
That’s why the hedge fund manager started JUST Capital, a nonprofit that seeks to broaden company missions beyond profitability that can come at the expense of society or the planet, he said at TED2015 in Vancouver.
“Its mission is very simple: help companies learn how to operate in a more just fashion by using the public’s input to define exactly what the criteria are for just corporate behavior,” Jones, who runs $13 billion Tudor Investment Corp., said in his presentation. “We put so much emphasis on profits, in exclusion of all else. It’s like we’ve ripped the humanity out of our companies.”
The organization will publish an annual September survey that polls a representative sample of 20,000 Americans about what they think just corporate action entails, Jones said. Next year, the nonprofit will rank the 1,000 largest U.S. firms by equitable behavior, as defined by the findings, in what it calls the JUST Index. Jones, 60, added that merely increasing corporate philanthropy shouldn’t count as changed conduct.
Once the ranking is complete, JUST Capital plans to talk with companies about what it has found, according to Chief Executive Officer Martin Whittaker, who spoke in a telephone interview. The nonprofit, which Jones started about a year ago, counts celebrity author Deepak Chopra and Jean Oelwang, the CEO of Virgin Group’s foundation, among its board members, according to its website.
Impact Investing
Financial companies are increasingly devoting resources to the related field of impact investing, which seeks to make money while improving society. BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, said in February that it hired Deborah Winshel to run a new unit dedicated to the strategy. The impact investing industry may reach $1 trillion by 2020, according to a 2010 report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Rockefeller Foundation, which coined the phrase in 2007.
Winshel was previously president and chief operating officer of The Robin Hood Foundation, which Jones started in 1988 to help eradicate poverty in New York City, after the stock market crash the prior year that made him a fortune. The organization raised $175 million in 2014.
Jones was targeted last weekend by a group of New York-based protesters, who gathered outside of his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The group said they were protesting Jones for funding Republican efforts that include blocking a minimum wage hike, and how hedge funds influence government and politics to expand their wealth.