Al Gore's own global warming fund has $5 billion in assets

Tweet Geneva: "The sustainable investment firm run by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president, is about to be closed to new investors, having raised close to its $5 billion target.

Generation Investment Management will probably restrict inflows into its main Global Equity Fund next month,

Gore and David Blood, co-founder of the company" (and former Goldman Sachs executive), "said at a news conference Tuesday.

Blood said the firm could not manage more than $5 billion in assets. While assets under management did not yet correspond to that figure, he said, commitments were in that range.

He declined to name clients, but said that they were typically institutions, with 45 to 50 percent coming from Europe, 25 percent from Australia and the rest from the United States.

The private Swiss bank Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, which started selling the fund in Europe last year, is now the biggest investor in it, said the bank's senior partner, Thierry Lombard.

Gore and a United Nations panel on the environment were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for raising awareness of the threat from climate change.

The fund, founded in 2004 by Gore and Blood, formerly of Goldman Sachs, invests in companies that follow so-called socially responsible guidelines in the expectation that they will report better returns.

"More money is allocated by markets around the world in one hour than by all the governments on the planet in a full year," Gore said.

"The principles and ways and values that have an impact on the

• way markets allocate resources can have an enormous effect" in tackling climate change, he said.

• Gore declined to give performance details for the fund.

The fund's largest holding is the 7 percent of assets invested in Novo Nordisk, the world's largest insulin maker. Gore and Blood have also invested in Nestlé, the world's largest food company, and Johnson Controls, the largest maker of automotive seats and batteries.

Novo Nordisk, traded in Denmark, has advanced 34 percent over the past 12 months, while Nestlé has risen 2.1 percent in Zurich and Johnson Controls, in Milwaukee, has fallen 0.8 percent.

The Morgan Stanley Capital International index has declined 12 percent over the same period.

"The investors that are more attracted to the strategy we follow are managing long-term assets toward long-term goals," Gore said. "Those looking for a quick hit in the market place, to skim the cream and go somewhere else, those are not the investors attracted to this strategy.""