Money Manager Starts Alternative Energy Fund

By Hayley Hanson

June 14, 2007 at 01:31 PM

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Calvert Group Ltd. is trying to give advisors a new tool to capture the imaginations of clients who want to do well with their retirement investments by doing good works.

Calvert, Bethesda, Md., has introduced the Global Alternative Energy Fund, a fund aimed at investors who want to help fight global warming or who simply see investing in efforts to address that risk as a good financial opportunity.

Calvert is a unit of UNIFI Mutual Holding Company, Lincoln, Neb., which is also the parent of Ameritas Life, Union Central Life and several other life insurers.

Calvert recently commissioned a survey of 1,094 U.S. investors to learn more about the investors' views on environmentally conscious investing.

About 75% of the survey participants said they are concerned about the environment, but only about 20% said they had discussed environmentally conscious investment opportunities with their financial advisors, Calvert executives said Wednesday at a press conference held to promote the new mutual fund and release the survey results.

Meanwhile, 85% of the survey participants "agreed that alternative energy investments… represent a dual opportunity to support the environment and generate profit at the same time," Calvert executives write in an analysis of the survey results.

Now that Calvert has created the alternative energy fund, "financial advisors can sit down with clients to decide what an appropriate allocation" of their money is, Steve Falci, Calvert's chief investment officer for equities, said at the press conference.

The new fund is a global investment as well as a vehicle for supporting efforts to develop alternative energy sources, company executives said.

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