Pension funds and insurers manage $100 trillion dollars — can they use it to help solve global problems?
Over the past century, finance has become increasingly disconnected from the physical world it depends on. Every day, trillions of dollars move through financial markets as stocks, bonds and derivatives. Much of that money never reaches the businesses, infrastructure and systems that power the real economy. The scale of this shift is striking. In 2024, around $149 trillion worth of shares were traded on global stock markets. Yet, companies raised only $741 billion in new capital through those same markets. So, for...
