Guernsey to host Sustainable Finance Week in June

Guernsey, a leading centre in green and sustainable finance, has announced it is hosting an array of international speakers for its first Sustainable Finance Week in June.

Building on Guernsey's global leadership across sustainable finance and private wealth, the Sustainable Finance Week will bring together leading sustainable finance experts and private wealth and family office professionals, advisers and private investors from Europe, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Guernsey, for an online event from 9-11 June.

The Sustainable Finance Week will focus on financing sustainability through private wealth and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on climate finance.

Dr Andy Sloan, chair of Guernsey Green Finance, said: "Guernsey's Sustainable Finance Week has a specific and perhaps unique focus - how to best leverage private wealth and capital to address the issue of climate change and the sustainability agenda."

The event would have been held in Guernsey but had to move online because of travel restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr Sloan said that the online format would hopefully engage interested audiences from across the world.

Among the confirmed speakers are:

• Ben Caldecott, founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme, and strategic adviser to the UK Green Finance Initiative's Chief Executive;
• Richard Burrett, former head of the UN EP Financial Institutions Programme, Professor of Sustainability at Cambridge University, and Sustainability Adviser to fund manager Earth Capital; 
• Gurpreet Manku, deputy director-general and head of policy at the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA);
• Divya Seshamani, managing partner of Greensphere LLP and Member of the UK Government's Council of Sustainable Business where she leads the Net-Zero Carbon initiative;
• Ben McQuhae, founder and co-chair of the Hong Kong Green Finance Task Force; Stephen Nolan, Managing Director, Financial Centres for Sustainable (FC4S).

Guernsey, through Guernsey Green Finance, is a member of the United Nations' Finance Centres for Sustainability Global Network. The world's first green regulated fund product - the Guernsey Green Fund - was launched in 2018.

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