Abstract:

Impact investing takes different shapes across European markets. As other sustainable and responsible investment strategies, but in different ways, local impact investing markets are heavily influenced by local history and sensitivities. They are also heavily dependent on how local social and financial systems are structured what determines the mix of public and private capital. In recent years, impact investing has gained significant attention from policy-makers and investors in Europe. It was discussed for the first time at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2013 in Davos, Switzerland, and in June, the same year, the UK hosted the first G8 Social Impact Investment Forum, the first event to use the G8 platform to discuss social investments. In January 2015 OECD Committee for Industry, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) published report called Social impact investment: Building the Evidence Base. Social impact investment has become the topic of growing interest within the OECD linking to two strategic OECD initiatives, New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) and Inclusive Growth as well as ongoing work across a number of Directorates. Meanwhile, Impact Investing is once again confirmed as the fastest growing strategy with a growth of 385%. Although the growth remains small in terms of assets, it has made Impact Investing, the most dynamic and definitely the most promising approach for investors. Impact Investing is followed by Sustainability Themed investments in 2016 with a remarkable growth of 146%. France registers the most significant growth (881% over 2013-2015), followed by Spain (with 264%). The main focus of this paper is to describe and analyze possibilities and opportunities for growing Impact investments market from the point of view of selected biggest markets. We assume that investors have a wider range of expectations for impact investment financial returns what estimates significant market opportunity for Impact investment over currently ongoing economic problems we face with a great mistrust and caution in financial markets. The main results of this paper identify the challenges for growth of impact investment markets in selected country.