Nick Robins

This is a popular history of one of the world's most famous companies. Founded in 1600, the East India Company was the forerunner of the modern multinational. Starting life as a trader in Asian spices, the Company ended its days running Britain's Indian empire. In the process, it shocked its contemporaries with the scale of its violence, corruption and speculation. This is the first-ever book to expose the Company's social record. Robins reveals a hidden story of tragedy and intrigue. War, famine, stock-market bubbles and even duels between rival executives are all to be found in this new account. For Robins, the Company's legacy provides compelling lessons on how to ensure the accountability of today's global business.

How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multi

The Corporation that Changed the World

الشركة التي غيرت العالم

Dogu Hindistan Kumpanyasinin Modern Cokuluslulugu Sekillendirmesi

Dünyayi Degistiren Sirket

Cary Krosinsky

Stephen Viederman

Sustainable Investing is fast becoming an essential method of generating long-term returns, moving beyond the negative approaches to socially responsible investing that have dominated the field. This book, our second on the subject, provides over 15 case studies of leading global investors and companies demonstrating how they successfully apply sustainability aspects to their core strategies. Learn from prominent thought leaders Dan Esty and Paul Hawken among others who have contributed key chapters. Our chapter on performance shows clearly how these strategies have been working once negative approaches are parsed out by those examining fund returns. This book also examines in great depth what data exists, and what's on the horizon, to best measure & capture sustainability successfully. Regional perspectives, including 3 chapters on Asia, and focuses on Canada, Australia, Africa & India are also included, as is a look across asset classes. Sustainable Investing, when performed with a positive perspective, has been outperforming the mainstream, unlike negative approaches designed to match benchmark returns. From eco-efficiency to sustainability-driven innovation and beyond, investors of all shapes & sizes need to know how best to position themselves for the radical market shifts underway.

Strategies, Funds and Thought Leadership

Evolutions in Sustainable Investing

From War to Peace tells the story of the adaptation from White Ensign to Red Ensign, and to flags of other nations, of the numerous classes of naval ships mainly built during the two world wars and surplus to requirements with the advent of peace. It also describes ships sourced from the United States Navy and elsewhere that were converted for commercial use. The most successful classes to transfer to the merchant service were the Hunt-class minesweepers of the Great War, Landing Craft, Tank, the salvage tugs of World War Two, and the wooden-hulled Fairmile launches which became familiar at seaside resorts in the 1950s and 60s; and, of course, the MFV classes that helped the fishing industry in the postwar years. The story includes the successful commercial conversions of many of the Flower and Castle Class corvettes and River Class frigates, notably the 1954 conversion of HMCS Stormont to a luxury yacht for the Greek shipping magnate Onassis. It describes why HMS Charybdis became a passenger liner in the Great War, and how HMS Albatross nearly became a luxury liner after World War Two, but in fact was transformed into a very unpopular emigrant ship and ended her days as a floating casino based at Cape Town. The author reveals the military antecedents of numerous commercial vessels that many would have thought were built especially for the service that they later maintained, and it illustrates just how many Royal Navy vessels ended up in private ownership. And the question is asked: if the military had not built so many ships that were eminently suitable for commercial adaptation, would the technical development of merchant shipping have progressed at a faster rate than it did? The answer is a definite no, and is illustrated in several ways. It was former naval vessels that promoted the early development of the Ro-Ro ferry; former naval ships introduced numerous design innovations, for example, the raised foredeck common for so many years on salvage tugs, and, above all, stripped of their military hardware, ex naval ships provided opportunities for modest investment where otherwise there would have been none. Copiously illustrated throughout, the book tells a fascinating story of invention and ingenious ship conversion, and of pragmatic adaptation in the financially stringent years after two world wars.

The Conversion of Naval Vessels After Two World Wars

From War to Peace

In August 1812 Henry Bell’s Comet, a revolutionary paddle steamer, made her first journey on the Clyde. This marked the start of extraordinary developments that completely transformed shipping and transport in Britain, Europe and the Americas. The paddle steamer soon became the key link with Empire, pushing the Honourable East India Company’s wooden walls off the seas; it provided the all- important link with the Americas, and it offered emigrants to the New World a means of pushing westwards. In this fascinating new book Nick Robins analyses the remarkable impact of the paddle steamer and goes on to describe its development, both in terms of technology design and in relation to its effects on the transformation of nineteenth-century economies. He includes all Henry Bells disciples - the Burns brothers, Laird, Napier, Fulton, Syminton Cunard and Denny to name a few, and looks at their individual contributions. The impact of the paddle steamer on transport is difficult to overstate. It helped with the export of cotton from the American southern states, and with the transport of oil from Burma’s oil fields. The great stern wheelers of the Mississipi are legendary, but they also migrated to the Murray and Darling rivers in Australia, and to the Congo and Nile rivers in Africa, and the great rivers of Russia. This wonderful story of nineteenth-century ingenuity will appeal to shipping enthusiasts and those with a wider interest in industrial history.

The Rise and Fall of the Paddle Steamer

The Coming of the Comet

Sustainable Investing is fast becoming the smart way of generating long-term returns. With conventional investors now scrambling to factor in issues such as climate change, this book captures a turning point in the evolution of global finance. Bringing together leading practitioners of Sustainable Investing from across the globe, this book charts how this agenda has evolved, what impact it has today, and what prospects are emerging for the years ahead. Sustainable Investing has already been outperforming the mainstream, and concerned investors need to know how best to position themselves for potentially radical market change.

The Art of Long-Term Performance

Sustainable Investing

At the beginning of the last century it was possible to sail from London to Glasgow via the south coast ports and Belfast, returning along the east coast from either Dundee or Leith for as little as five pounds. Those were the days when 300 passengers were landed twice weekly at Grangemouth or Dundee from the London boat, and the coastal passenger and cargo liner was in its heyday, catering both for the first class tourist as well as offering keenly priced second class fares for the like of football fans following away matches. Sadly, these wonderful steamer services are now largely forgotten but this new book will stir fond memories of the ships and their coastal voyages. The Depression of the 1930s, coupled with competition from both railway and the motor coach, were to spell the end for many of the coastal liners, while heavy losses incurred in World War II left only a few ships each offering just a handful of passenger berths. ?The story of their one hundred years of service is accompanied by numerous fascinating anecdotes, and the book focuses as much on the social need for coastal passenger services, the men and women who provided the services and the passengers who used them, as it does on the nuts and bolts of the ships themselves. This beautifully presented book will delight both ship enthusiasts and all those who enjoy the maritime and social history of the British Isles.

Nick Robins

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