Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All; Forbes, March 13, 2019

Morgan Simon, Forbes; Famed Investor Named In Elite College Scandal, Raising Critical Ethics Questions for All

"Yesterday, William E. “Bill” McGlashan Jr., Founder and Managing Partner of the $13B TPG Growth fund, was indicted in the elite college scandal. He was particularly noted for his candor in recorded phone calls about his efforts to buy a slot at USC for his child for $250,000. The tactic, employed by ringleader William Singer, was to photoshop McGlashan’s son to look like a recruitment-worthy football kicker — despite the fact that his son’s high school did not have a football team.

McGlashan has recently gained notoriety as a proponent of impact investing. The Rise Fund, an initiative he co-founded under the TPG umbrella, has raised over $2B for interventions seeking to address global poverty and climate change.

The fact that McGlashan was a proponent of ethical investment has raised several deep questions for the sector, and for the general public. Does exercising your unchecked privilege in the world make you less ethical - separate from whether or not your actions are illegal? Should promoters of ethical investments be held to a higher standard when it comes to their personal ethics? Do you need to have impeccable ethics to be a good impact investor?...

Ethics is also about acknowledging the ways that those of us with privilege — whether it be due to social class, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or the intersections between — can be complicit in exploiting others through fully legal means."