Charles William Jacob (24 January 1921 – 1 June 2015) was a stockbroker in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

who was a pioneer and promoter of

ethical investment Socially responsible investing (SRI), social investment, sustainable socially conscious, "green" or ethical investing, is any investment strategy which seeks to consider both financial return and social/environmental good to bring about social ...

.Charles Jacob, ethical investor - obituary.
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The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'', 25 June 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2015. Jacob was born into poverty in

Hornsey Hornsey is a district of north London, England in the London Borough of Haringey The London Borough of Haringey (pronounced , same as Harringay) is a London borough in North London, classified by some definitions as part of Inner Lo ...

, north London, and became a Methodist at a young age. After working his way up from office boy, he became a stockbroker specialising in gilt-edged and fixed-interest stocks. In 1972 he was asked to manage the

Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

's investment fund and his interest in ethical investment developed from there. He became a director of a number of investment companies and was the director and patron of the UK Sustainable Investment & Finance Association. Jacob was a Methodist preacher. He was made MBE in 1988, and CBE in 2011.

References

People from Hornsey Ethical investment English Methodists 1921 births 2015 deaths English money managers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English stockbrokers 20th-century English businesspeople {{UK-business-bio-1920s-stub