Dr. Bernd Villhauer served as Executive Director of the Global Ethic Institute from 2015 to 2025 and is now Senior Advisor for Finance. His research focuses on financial ethics, monetary theory, and sustainable finance. In recent years, he has published books on topics including wealth, financial markets and ethics, greenwashing in the financial sector, and the ECB’s sustainability efforts.
The Finance and Economics Research Group is an interdisciplinary association dedicated to contributing to the development of a socially just and environmentally sustainable market economy. In October 2018, the research group became affiliated with the Global Ethic Institute, thereby continuing the work of the Research Group on Ethical and Ecological Rating (FGEÖR).
The research group’s primary focus is on shaping the financial market in a socially just and environmentally sustainable manner. Sustainable investments and investment strategies are central to its work, as are public investments, the European “Sustainable Finance” strategy plan, and the appointment of Global Ethos Ambassadors within financial institutions. “It is important,” says Board Member Dr. Bernd Villhauer of the Global Ethic Institute, “that we maintain the FGEÖR’s integrative approach—not just looking at the financial side, but continuing to consider it in conjunction with real economic problems and practical requirements.”
The FGEÖR gained international attention in the 1990s with the Frankfurt-Hohenheim Guidelines, an early critique of responsible investment and the ethical evaluation of companies. The system of sustainability criteria for cultural, environmental, and social compatibility established there served as the basis for the Corporate Responsibility Rating developed by oekom research AG (now ISS-oekom/oekom research AG) in Munich, which is used by many institutional investors, banks, and investment companies.
The FGEÖR collaborated with institutions involved in ethical and environmental ratings to promote the concept of ethical investing. To this end, it launched the book series “Money and Ethics” (Altius Verlag) in 2008 and initiated the symposium “Sustainability as a Guiding Principle for the Framework Conditions of Financial and Commodity Markets.”
The FGEÖR’s principles and demands for a revision of the legal foundations of competition rules were incorporated into the German federal government’s sustainability dialogue in June 2016.
Prof. Johannes Hoffmann, co-founder of the FGEÖR, commented: “If it is still permitted today for market performance to be based on the exploitation of common goods, competition is discredited, and so is the return on investment; for market success then contributes to the depletion of natural resources and the impoverishment of future generations.”
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