History of Investing in Plastics | Gabriel Thoumi

History of Investing in Plastics

Gabriel Thoumi, CFA, FRM
Head of Plastics Programme and Director of Financial Markets

Gabriel is a CFA and FRM qualified research manager in debt, equity, and commodity markets. He brings over 15 years of experience with extensive technical knowledge on integrating scientific and ESG data into financial models to determine pricing signals and asset allocation strategies. He has led many successful global investment research programs and engagement strategies. He has also achieved the Certified Ecologist certification from the Ecological Society of America.

Planet Tracker is a non-profit financial think tank aligning capital markets with planetary boundaries. It was created to investigate the risk of market failure related to environmental limits. This investigation is primarily for the investor community where environmental limits, other than climate change, are poorly understood, even more poorly communicated and not aligned with investor capital.

Planet Tracker creates ground-breaking in-depth financial analytics delivered through reports and briefing papers to raise awareness of ‘values-at-risk’ to the financial community, and engages with institutional investors and analysts to unlock and redirect the transformative power of capital markets to deliver on sustainable development objectives.

Planet Tracker is seeking to build upon the growing recognition by many in the finance community that they do not have the information necessary to assess environmental or social risk within investment portfolios, including planetary degradation and the objectives of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Planet Tracker’s initial focus is on global industry sectors defined by significant investment flows and revenues in the context of the planetary boundaries that are most threatened. We are also examining areas where, though financial flows may be relatively small, the ecological resource risks are large. Planet Tracker has a ‘duty of care’ to address these potential ecological resource fault lines, irrespective of their immediate financial significance.

Planet Tracker and Carbon Tracker are two initiatives of Investor Watch, founded by Mark Campanale and Nick Robins. Planet Tracker investigates the risk of market failure related to ecological limits, focusing on oceans, food & land use and materials such as textiles and plastics. Carbon Tracker carries out in-depth analysis on the impact of the energy transition on capital markets and the potential investment in high-cost, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.