Robert Gardner has built four ventures in financial services, including Redington, the UK investment consultancy that’s advised on £800B+ in assets.

Now he’s taking on a new category: Natural Capital.

Because nature has always been “investable”, just usually as a commodity.

The old way looks like squeezing every ounce of value out of the Earth without any regard for long-term consequences. The playbook was essentially cut it down, harvest it, extract the value, and move on.

Robert thinks that model is outdated, and he’s building the alternative, making nature an investible asset class (more like real estate or infrastructure), where the value comes from what nature does, not what you can take from it.

In this episode, Stacy Havener sits down with Robert to get concrete about what investing in nature looks like in the real world.

Listen in to hear:

• What changes when you’re not raising money for a strategy… but for a new asset class
• How Robert translates Natural Capital into familiar investing language (property/infrastructure)
• A real case study (Nestlé + oyster reefs) and the incentive chain behind it
• What underwriting looks like when your revenue is tied to nature doing its job
• Why legitimacy comes from repetition + simplicity (not complexity)
• The early-stage trust-building lesson every emerging fund manager needs

More about Rob Gardner:

Robert is Co-Founder & CEO of Rebalance Earth, the UK’s largest dedicated Natural Capital asset manager. He previously served as Investment Director at St. James’s Place and co-founded Redington, Mallowstreet, and RedSTART. His work is focused on making nature an investible asset class and proving finance can be a force for good.

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