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Corporate Moves

TCW Group Acquires Engine No. 1’s ETF Business

The San Francisco-based firm’s Transform platform manages more than $600 million in US equity ETFs.

By Michael Katz



Asset management firm TCW Group has acquired San Francisco-based investment firm Engine No. 1’s exchange-traded fund business, along with its infrastructure, ETF portfolio managers and staff. The ETFs focus on supply chain onshoring, and energy transition. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Under the deal, Los Angeles-based TCW is acquiring all of Engine No. 1’s Transform ETF platform, which includes the active, thematic Transform Climate ETF, Transform Supply Chain ETFand the Transform 500 ETF index fund. The Transform ETF platform manages more than $600 million in U.S. equity ETFs that are focused on supply chain onshoring and energy transition.

According to TCW, the acquisition of the Transform ETF platform will provide it with the infrastructure to build out a larger ETF platform. The company also expects Engine No. 1’s capabilities to complement TCW’s existing thematic strategies in artificial intelligence, space technology, next-generation mobility and renewable energy infrastructure. The acquisition expands the range of TCW’s investment products that emphasize “sustainable investing grounded in economic realities,” according to the company.

The acquisition, expected to close in the third quarter, must be approved by shareholders.

“We’ve built a tremendous ETF business at Engine No. 1, and we’re extremely excited by the opportunity to scale it even more quickly as part of TCW,” Jennifer Grancio, CEO and architect of Engine No. 1’s ETF business, said in a release. “The active, thematic focus of the Transform ETFs fits incredibly well into TCW’s growth strategy, and we’re thrilled to help drive the firm’s expansion into new investment solutions.”

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According to corporate and investment bank Natixis, equity ETF inflows have fallen “dramatically” in 2023 from 2022’s “more stable flow activity,” while fixed-income ETF net flows have been “consistently strong and positive” during the first half of the year. However, the bank’s ETF outlook for the second half of 2023 also noted that “current market conditions favor investors preferring active management, as significant market volatility has created opportunities for active managers.”

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Home > ESG > Church of England Organizes $128M Fund Addressing Ties to Slave Trade

Church of England Organizes $128M Fund Addressing Ties to Slave Trade

The investment and grant fund will focus on projects to help communities ‘adversely impacted’ by the ‘appalling evil’ of human bondage.

By Larry Light



The Church of England has created a group to oversee a 100-million-pound ($128 million) program in a bid to atone for underwriting transatlantic slavery in the 1700s.

The Church Commissioners, the charity organization that manages the CofE’s $13 billion portfolio, set up the oversight group to disburse the money over the next nine years. The group will have at least 10 members and be led by Rosemarie Mallett, the bishop of Croydon, a borough of London. Before her ordination as an Anglican minister, she worked as a research sociologist.

Others named to the group include: Vice Chair Geetha Tharmaratnam, chief impact investment officer of the WHO Foundation; Roy Swan, director of mission investments at The Ford Foundation; and Tara Sabre Collier, director of impacting investing and sustainable finance at Chemonics UK.

The fund will be earmarked for projects aimed at “helping communities adversely impacted by historic slavery,” the commissioners’ announcement said, although it did not specify exactly what or who would be funded. The money also will go to further researching the church’s role in promoting the slave trade.

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A report on the church’s involvement, initiated by the commissioners, estimated that a business it backed, the South Sea Co., transported 34,000 slaves “in crowded, unsanitary, unsafe and inhumane conditions” during its three decades of operation. By 1777, a church investment fund of the day, called Queen Anne’s Bounty, invested the current equivalent of $925 million into South Sea.

“Transatlantic chattel slavery is an appalling evil, whose consequences still affect society today, and we have a responsibility to respond to our historic links,” said the Right Rev. David Urquhart, one of the commissioners, who oversaw the forming of the oversight group, in a statement. “We take seriously our commitment to do that collaboratively, listening widely, with sensitivity and accountability.”

In the U.S., various religious and academic institutions have set up funds to funnel reparations to Blacks via scholarships and community outreach efforts. In 2020, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas pledged to pay $13 million in reparations to descendants of slaves. The U.S. Episcopal Church stems from the CofE but is an independent body.

The Virginia Theological Seminary, the Princeton Theological Seminary and Georgetown University are among those to pay slavery reparations. In July, Citigroup disclosed that some of its predecessor companies had ties to funding slavery. This resulted from a study the bank launched after the 2020 death of George Floyd. Citi has not announced any reparations payments as a result.


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