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A new capitalism, coloured green
April 21, 2010
David Ebner, The Globe and Mail
It’s not the typical language a private-equity fund uses to stoke interest among potential investors:
“The 21st century will see dramatic retooling of the ways we live together on the planet.”
“There must be a philosophical reinvention of where and how capital is deployed.”
This is a new capitalism, coloured green, as envisioned by Vancouver investors Joel Solomon and Carol Newell, scions of American fortunes, his from Tennessee real estate and hers from Newell Rubbermaid. They’ve spent the past 15 years on the West Coast, putting their inherited cash behind small companies, to make money and to make the world a better place: “investing for change.”
For more than a decade, Renewal Partners Co. only invested the duo’s money—$7.1-million—in startup companies such as Happy Planet Foods and New Society Publishers.
Now, the small investment firm has opened its doors to outside cash. The call for “a philosophical reinvention” of investing as this century sees a “dramatic retooling” of how society lives was Renewal’s unorthodox pitch to potential investors. And it’s worked. The Renewal2 fund closed a first round of $18-million a year ago—raising the money through the worst of the great recession—and the company is working toward a final close of the fund at the end of May, nearing a total of $30-million.
