Online Lecture: 'Sound and fury signifying nothing? Business alliances and climate'
With the impacts of climate change increasingly evident, actions by key institutions of society ebb and flow. Governments need to use carrots and sticks so that we internalize the harms we are doing to others and to future generations. But business needs to innovate and change its practices to lower our burden on the planet and to help us adapt to the hardships we will face coping with extreme weather, sea level rise, and more.

The last decade has seen the emergence of business alliances devoted to addressing various aspects of climate change. They are denounced from the left as mere greenwashing and attacked from the right for being anti-competitive. Missing from this debate is evidence.

In May’s Balliol Online Lecture, Professor Peter Tufano will explain what business alliances seek to achieve and how they operate. With lawsuits mounting, especially in the US, he will ask: have they changed management practices, reduced emissions, violated antitrust laws, harmed shareholders, or been subterfuge for anti-climate lobbying?

Peter Tufano is Special Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol and Emeritus Peter Moores Professor of Finance at Saïd Business School, which he also led as Dean from 2011 to 2021. He is a Baker Foundation Professor and Senior Advisor to the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard Business School. Between 1989 to 2011, he oversaw Harvard Business School’s tenure and promotion processes, campus planning, and university relations and was the founding co-chair of the Harvard i-lab.

His research focuses on climate finance, climate alliances, and the financial impact of climate on households. His body of work also spans financial innovation, financial engineering, and household finance, which has been credited with influencing several major US policy initiatives, including the creation of a new class of savings products.
Date: 10 June 2025, 17:00
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speaker: Peter Tufano (Peter Moores Professor of Finance, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: development.office@balliol.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1117440179036/WN_QjMBS9EjSHmoWP6pJMEdUQ
Booking email: development.office@balliol.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editor: David Barker