Enterprise Rent-A-Car, likely the most customer-friendly in the industry, is positioning itself to make more money. How? By appointing Pamela Nicholson, who’s worked her way up from the front-line ranks when the company was only 200 people over 27 years ago, to the role of President in this family-owned private company.

Does adding women leaders make companies more money? The research of Catalyst.org, a non-profit based in New York, has consistently shown that the top 25% of companies with the largest share of women Directors on a public-company Board beat the bottom quartile companies with a return on equity 53% higher (13.9% for Boards with more women; 9.1% with fewer or no women). For public-company Boards with 3 or more women (the upper echelons of the top quartile), the return on equity skyrockets to 16%. Read more details about higher financial returns when women are represented in leadership which is not yet close to the 50% of women in the population, or the 47% in the workforce. At HIP Investor, we evaluate how companies that represent the population in Boards, executive teams, managers and staff drive higher “Human Impact” which tends to increase “Profit” and financial returns. This Human Impact + Profit, or HIP, correlation can be tracked and a useful measure for both companies and investors. Read the rest of this entry »

Fallout from the Lehman Brothers’ collapse will result in tighter credit conditions and falling share prices for cleantech firms, but experts are confident that the longer-term outlook still looks solid, Danny Bradbury of BusinessGreen reports.   Learn more and read HIP CEO R. Paul Herman’s expert analysis on what to expect in the short- and long-term.

Read the full article in BusinessGreen.com HERE

How can you vote HIP in 2008 ?  Do equity prices and incomes rise more in a Democratic or Republican administration?  How should you think about your investment portfolio?

WATCH this HIP Investor webinar ( CLICK HERE ) to see how McCain’s and Obama’s proposed policies as President compare, according to the HIP methodology, including:

• HEALTH - will 47 million uninsured Americans be covered?
• WEALTH - how might your taxes shift?
• EARTH - who will support actions for climate change?
• EQUALITY - how will all Americans have an equal chance to succeed?
• TRUST - who will advocate transparency?
• INNOVATION - what policies will support renewed jobs and revenue?

The event featured HIP Investor CEO Paul Herman, HIP Associate Wil Keenan, and Sam Dorman from the League of Young Voters.

Please CLICK HERE to view this highly valuable, one-hour webinar. (You will need to click the “dimdim” logo; and then there will be a five-second pause before the audio starts.)

If you would prefer to view the PowerPoint (PPT) presented in the webinar, CLICK HERE .

PLEASE VOTE ON NOVEMBER 4, 2008 - AND SHARE THIS WEBINAR WITH THOSE WHO ARE SEEKING MORE INFORMATION ON THE ISSUES.

We sought out 10 HIP places to park your cash and savings nationwide: make money and do good at the same time!

Download the 10 HIP Places to Park Your Cash one-pager, which was also presented at the March 2008 HIP Investor Roundtable.

You will find banks that build up enterprises that create strong Human Impact (Health, Wealth, Earth, Equality and Truth) and also drive Profit – for your portfolio, the bank and society overall!

IN THE NEWS:  HIP CEO’S CLEANTECH MEMO
TO PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA
BusinessGreen.com, November 7, 2008 issue

What should U.S. President-elect Barack Obama do about clean technology, renewable energy and the environment?

Danny Bradbury, of online cleantech publisher BusinessGreen.com: “We tracked down several of the leading players in the US cleantech and environmental movement to find out what they want to see from an Obama administration and what they expect to get.  From signing Kyoto to awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom for clean tech heroes, here are their responses:”

R. Paul Herman is chief executive and founder of HIP Investor, a San Francisco-based financial firm with a number of green funds and indices:

“We need an integrated economic-environmental-social strategy across all three sectors (business, NGOs and government) that tracks results with an overall performance scorecard. By measuring the quantifiable improvements in environmental, social and human effects – and how they drive economic vitality – an Obama administration could better design the tax code, regulatory framework, and cross-sector incentives to stimulate an improved society.

Read the rest of this entry »

• HIP 100 Index™, designed to weight the HIP fundamentals (Human Impact + Profit) of the S&P 100 companies.
• HIP 30 Index™, designed to highlight the top 30 companies of the HIP 100.

Read the rest of this entry »

The October issue cover story of Treasury and Risk magazine, written by Anne R. Field, profiles the opportunity to “green” your organization’s supply chain - and implement supplier scorecards. HIP’s CEO R. Paul Herman is interviewed:

“Mandating changes in supplier practices can deliver 90% or more of your greenhouse-gas reductions”

In addition, the feature analyzes Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard and Federal Express.

READ THE FULL COVER STORY HERE

We sought out 10 HIP places to park your cash and savings nationwide: make money and do good at the same time!

Download the 10 HIP Places to Park Your Cash one-pager, which was also presented at the March 2008 HIP Investor Roundtable.

You will find banks that build up enterprises that create strong
Human Impact (Health, Wealth, Earth, Equality and Truth) and also drive
Profit – for your portfolio, the bank and society overall!

Dr. Alex Edmans, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, just released a new analysis demonstrating that companies with high employee satisfaction and recognized by Fortune magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” list, tend to have higher long-term shareholder value. In addition, these “intangibles” appear not to be priced into the short-term valuations of equities (along with other environmental, social and governance issues).  This gives investors applying a HIP framework an advantage to buy in at a discount and later benefit if they hold for the longer term.
This study reinforces the tenets of the HIP methodology and approach - that focusing on Human Impact leads to Profit and shareholder value. Since employees are the core engine of a company, the developers of its intellectual capital, the face to the customer, and the managers of its assets, the focus of keeping them satisfied (like Southwest Airlines - NYSE: LUV) will typically result in investor benefits over the long term.

CLICK HERE to read the insightful abstract and download the full fascinating paper.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, likely the most customer-friendly in the industry, is positioning itself to make more money. How? By appointing Pamela Nicholson, who’s worked her way up from the front-line ranks when the company was only 200 people over 27 years ago, to the role of President in this family-owned private company.

Does adding women leaders make companies more money? The research of Catalyst.org, a non-profit based in New York, has consistently shown that the top 25% of companies with the largest share of women Directors on a public-company Board beat the bottom quartile companies with a return on equity 53% higher (13.9% for Boards with more women; 9.1% with fewer or no women). For public-company Boards with 3 or more women (the upper echelons of the top quartile), the return on equity skyrockets to 16%. Read more details about higher financial returns when women are represented in leadership which is not yet close to the 50% of women in the population, or the 47% in the workforce. At HIP Investor, we evaluate how companies that represent the population in Boards, executive teams, managers and staff drive higher “Human Impact” which tends to increase “Profit” and financial returns. This Human Impact + Profit, or HIP, correlation can be tracked and a useful measure for both companies and investors.

Read the rest of this entry »