Brian Dumaine writes: \u00a0Famed investor Paul Tudor Jones believes that we\u2019re headed for trouble if we don\u2019t shrink the wealth gap. His solution? Pressure companies to be more just.<\/p>\n
Jones, 60, who has an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, was having coffee one day with Deepak Chopra, the holistic medicine advocate and bestselling author, who knows the Wall Street titan through Jones\u2019s wife, Sonia, an Australian by birth who runs a yoga and wellness business. Chopra had grown deeply concerned about income inequality. \u201cI had been going to Occupy Wall Street meetings and saw the rage but didn\u2019t see the solutions,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n During a spirited discussion with Jones about America\u2019s disappearing middle class, Chopra, who teaches a course at Columbia Business School called Just Capital & Cause-Driven Marketing, brought up an idea one of his students had suggested in class: create a stock market index that would drive capital to companies that treated their employees and communities well. The concept of a market-driven approach appealed to Jones, the onetime cotton trader who founded Tudor Investment Corp. in 1980, became famous by predicting the crash of \u201987, and today manages $13.8 billion. \u201cI thought, Wouldn\u2019t this be a great thing to do?\u201d says Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n Jones did some quick research\u2014and was both surprised and more than a little embarrassed to discover that taking a values-based approach to the stock market was hardly an original thought.<\/p>\n Then Jones had a different idea: Why not rank America\u2019s top 1,000 companies based not on what Wall Street values\u2014profits\u2014but rather on what Main Street wants? If the list caught on, he reasoned, companies might someday vie to be ranked higher than their rivals. And to do so they would have to pay workers more fairly, make products more sustainably, and give more back to the community.<\/span><\/p>\n To put his plan into action, Jones earlier this year created a nonprofit called\u00a0Just Capital.\u00a0The mission is to research what makes people like or dislike corporations and then to create an annual list\u2014which will debut in the fall of 2016\u2014tentatively called the Just 1000. \u201cWe want to give the American public a voice where it\u2019s never had a voice,\u201d says Jones. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be crystal clear and unbiased and without prejudice. And it\u2019s going to drive corporate behavior.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Skeptics might wonder what kind of difference a simple list can make. But Jones believes that harnessing public opinion can prove powerful\u2014and that changing the behavior of big companies could have a cascading effect.<\/span><\/p>\n (To read about 51 companies already having a positive impact,\u00a0see our Change the World list<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brian Dumaine writes: \u00a0Famed investor Paul Tudor Jones believes that we\u2019re headed for trouble if we don\u2019t shrink the wealth gap. His solution? Pressure companies to be more just. Jones, 60, who has an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, … Continue reading