Macquarie heavyweights headline 2025 Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific

The 2025 Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific is set to be the biggest ever, featuring heavyweights from Macquarie Group, such as Viktor Shvets and former chief executive Nicholas Moore, who will headline this year's event that focuses on scaling investments for positive impact.

The annual summit, which targets impact investing for advisers, foundations, and family offices, marks its 10-year anniversary in 2025. It will be held at the International Convention Centre in Sydney from March 26 to 27.

With nearly 500 delegates attending last year's event, Kerry Series, the director of Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific, expects the turnout to be the biggest ever this year.

"Partly because I think the impact investing sector is the fastest-growing sector, albeit from a smaller base, within responsible investment, and financial services companies are recognising that," Series told Financial Standard.

Macquarie Group global strategist Viktor Shvets, a keynote speaker on day one, recently wrote the book The Twilight Before the Storm, which discusses how capitalism is moving to a yet-to-be-defined alternative system. This underpins a key thematic of the summit.

"The purpose of the summit is to get money to move to companies and funds and organisations that are helping to solve social and environmental challenges. By doing that, we are creating part of the transition to a new economic system that Viktor describes," Series said.

Series will moderate the panel Institutional Investors - Investing in an Era of Turbulence on day one, which also features Shvets.

The panel will include LeapFrog Investments chief executive Andy Kuper, JANA Investment Advisers head of sustainability Rachel Halpern, and For Purpose Investment Partners executive director Michael Trail.

"There is a lot of turbulence occurring outside of financial markets in the form of political and geopolitical turbulence. What I'm interested to hear from institutional investors is how are they dealing with these issues and how this impacts decision making?," Series said.

Former Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore will open day two in a session called Invested: Australia's Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040.

Also on day two, Queensland government treasurer David Janetzki will talk about the social enterprise sector and impact investing.

"One of the first things David's done as treasurer is to set up an office of social impact, which is going to be run by Ben Gales. The Liberal Party, which came into power last October, also set up a social enterprise fund that is going to invest $20 million a year for the four years of their term into that fund," Series said.

"It would be very interesting to hear why the LNP government in Queensland is getting behind social impact and social entrepreneurs."

Financial Standard is a media partner of the 2025 Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific.