NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business

In 2022, the Investindustrial Foundation continued its long-term support of the New York University Stern Center for Sustainable Business (CSB) and the development of their Return on Sustainability Investment (ROSI) methodology to bridge the gap between sustainability format strategies and financial performance.

Led by Professor Tensie Whelan, Director of CSB, NYU Stern is developing open source tools that can be used by private equity and corporates to better assess and create financial value through stepping up investments in sustainability.

The aim of ROSI is to assist companies with monetising the return on their investments in sustainability and improve corporate and investor decision-making. Investindustrial first contributed funding to NYU Stern CSB and became a founding donor of the Center in 2018 when Aston Martin joined their research effort to test the ROSI methodology within the automotive industry. CSB continues to make progress on testing its methodology with different industries, including agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, utilities, and apparel.

The latest research project began in late 2020, when Investindustrial provided the NYU Stern CSB with funding as well as access to portfolio company data to develop and test new ROSI frameworks. The outcome of this project spanning 2020 and 2021 in the food and beverages sector is leveraged by Investindustrial portfolio companies in the same sector and other industrial manufacturing sectors to measure the monetised impact of their sustainability initiatives during Investindustrial’s holding period. CSB’s work on ROSI has been featured in the Financial Times and publications such as Harvard Business Review, Barron’s and GreenBiz, and at global conferences.