They represent a community and its values

The crisis will mark the landscape of the financial industry. A first already noticeable trend is the strengthening of very long-term investors, which found its dynamics in a dual observation. First of all, the crisis reminded that investing in shares is an option too risky for the one who invests in the short term. Academic literature shows that risk to 1 year in a diversified portfolio of shares in the United States is two times more than 30 years. In France, it is divided by four if it invests in 10 years instead of 1 year. Shares are reserved for long players (life insurers, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds) to finance the retirement of their investors or those to whom they entrust the management of their funds. Of course, the idea of a retreat by capitalization that would give people the care to invest their savings is shaken. Even with safeguards, this system might generate aberrant inequities between lucky generations (which would take their retirement at the normal time) and unfortunate (who left their savings when a stock market crisis). This does not disqualify so retirement savings investment in shares, but advocates for a system ensuring the stability of a part of the pension financing by capital invested in the very long term. The State will be at the heart of this device, via tools such as the pension reserve fund.

Second finding: the crisis has updated the comparative advantage of actors able to engage significant masses of capital for long periods and counter-cyclical manner. Investors short as the sicav shares and, to a lesser extent, "hedge funds" are exposed to the possibility of a leak in their base of capital for short term performance. The work of John Campbell, of Harvard University, have established that periods of falling prices are followed in the term of a rebound. The fall of the markets thus offers an historic opportunity for long term gains patient actors. All are not public (of university endowments, of foundations, pension funds), but the State has a role to play because it has a unique ability to attract capital on its balance sheet, especially in times of crisis, at a moderate cost. The debt of State plays the role of safe haven, as the yellow metal at the time of the standard gold. Such a financial policy assumes a certain budgetary responsibility, because credibility is the most valuable assets of the investor State.

A second trend is the development of responsible investment. Sovereign wealth funds, endowment of foundations or universities are not like other investors. They represent a community and its values. They are naturally sensitive to the compatibility of these values with the projects that their capital is used to fund. The growing importance of ethical standards among investors is already tangible: across the world, 15,000 billion of capital (five times more than sovereign wealth funds and seven times more than the "hedge funds") have already been placed with the commitment to take account of environmental, social and governance criteria in their investment policy by subscribing to the principles of responsible investment of the United Nations. France, responsible investment is one of the pillars of the investment policy of the pension reserve fund.

The growth of public actors will increase the size of the responsible funds around the world. This change is positive for more than a title. First because it will increase tenfold the impact of investment on companies seeking not to alienate this source of capital. But also, more specific to the France, responsible investment provides a way to reconcile the public with the capital market. Want our public funds know highlight this dimension of ethics lobbying positive rather than negative temptation of economic patriotism.