Shows
The Geneva ConnectionSEASON 2 | EP 4 | From Promise to Performance: A Reform Agenda for Blended FinanceBlended finance is often promoted as a way to mobilise private capital for sustainable development, yet systemic barriers still constrain its scale and effectiveness. In this episode, Lisa Sachs, Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), unpacks the 2025 report From Promise to Performance: Reforming Blended Finance for Scale. She outlines five structural challenges — transparency, risk pricing, liquidity, pipeline gaps, and additionality — and why addressing them is key to unlocking impact. The conversation also explores practical reforms and the roles of DFIs, donors, and rating agencies in making blended finance more efficient and effective.
Seaso...
2025-09-2240 minThe Geneva ConnectionSEASON 2 | EP 3 | Catalytic Capital Meets Impact Investing: Making Purpose InvestibleScaling Impact investing in emerging markets still requires strategic use of catalytic capital. In this episode, Nicolas Muller, Managing Director of Blue Earth Capital explores how impact-focused investment strategies are structured to balance risk, returns, and outcomes. From the role of philanthropy in de-risking to practical insights on attracting commercial capital into high-impact deals, we look at what it takes to turn purpose into investible opportunity — and what’s still missing to bridge the gap at scale.
Season 2 is produced in collaboration with the SDG Impact Finance Initiative (SIFI).
Hosted by Luka Biernacki.
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2025-09-1824 minThe Geneva ConnectionSEASON 2 | EP 2 | Inside the Engine Room: Mobilising Capital for People and PlanetImpact investing plays a crucial role in closing the $4 trillion SDG financing gap, yet represents only 1.2% of global assets. How can we scale it to meet the world's needs? In this episode, Guillaume Bonnel, CEO of the SDG Impact Finance Initiative (SIFI), examines the barriers constraining impact investing — from liquidity challenges and misaligned risk perceptions to regulatory obstacles — and explores how blended finance can unlock private capital at scale. He discusses how concessional capital, platform approaches, and enhanced data standardization can align public and private interests, ensure genuine additionality, and channel investment flows toward emerging markets where both impact pote...
2025-09-0332 minThe Geneva ConnectionSEASON 2 | EP 1 | Development as an Investment Challenge: Jeffrey Sachs on Financing the FutureDevelopment is often framed as aid, but for Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s leading development economists, it’s first and foremost an investment challenge. In this opening episode, Professor Sachs explores why capital isn’t flowing to the countries that need it most, how risk perceptions keep private money out of poor economies, and what a new investment-led development model could look like by 2030.
The episode is part of Season 2 of The Geneva Connection — “Bridging the Gap: Financing the Future of Sustainable Development.” This four-episode season takes listeners inside the world of development finance: why...
2025-08-1941 min