Paris, 8 December 2015: Forty-plus investors, financiers, and policy specialists met at the Hôtel Le Meurice to discuss what a UN agreement in Paris might do for global capital markets and major asset owners — and vice-versa.

The Groupe La Francaise-Inflection Point Capital Management dinner was the culmination of a fifteen-month global conversation to bring together major players to discuss and debate the evolving low carbon investment theme. From its initiation in Tokyo in September 2014, and then through nine similar dinners and events during 2014-15 in Paris, Davos, Tokyo, London, Paris, Stockholm, London, Geneva, and Paris, the GLF-IPCM COP21 series saw 175 globally significant investment institutions, policy specialists and academics discuss how to mobilize capital for a sustainable, low carbon world.

In the immediate run up to the Paris dinner, both the GLF and IPCM teams had been promoting ideas that sat at the very heart of the UN COP21 process:

• Groupe La Francaise Chairman Xavier Lepine published a thought piece (download PDF) promoting the idea of an Externalities Stability Board, of which a Carbon Stability Board would be a critical component.
• IPCM Partner, and Founder/CEO of The Blended Capital Group, Paul Clements-Hunt, worked with the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, to conceive and launch the “Bangkok-Johannesburg-Blueprint” (see PDF) during Cities Day (8 December) at COP21. The Blueprint is a set of recommendations to mobilize capital at scale into climate-smart urban infrastructure.
• IPCM Managing Director Gordon Noble moderated and managed the Bangkok “Blueprint” event and authored a 12-page thought piece to assist the UNSG’s Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance in planning the road ahead after COP21.