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Liz Houston

Liz Houston

Vice President, MSCI Research

Liz Houston is a member of MSCI’s ESG and climate research team, focusing on retail and luxury. Prior to joining MSCI, she worked as an investor in the retail and luxury industries within investment management. Her work ranged from providing fundamental analysis of companies, financial modeling and valuation to ongoing stewardship and engagement with company management on issues such as corporate performance, governance, strategy and sustainability. Liz studied mathematics and philosophy at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and is a CFA® Charterholder.

Research and Insights

Articles by Liz Houston

    The Sustainability and Climate Trends to Watch for 2025

    Podcast | Dec 13, 2024 | Namita Nair, Jonathan Ponder, Liz Houston

    Join us as we cover the sustainability and climate trends that our team thinks will shape the year head. We talk about energy transition opportunities that are emerging in private markets, rising social risks and big tech, falling data access for AI models and much more. Here’s to a big, intriguing 2025!

    Does Social Matter?

    Podcast | Aug 6, 2024 | Michael Disabato, Xinxin Wang, Liz Houston

    The social pillar has often been maligned as the ignored step sibling of the ESG acronym. In its essence, the social pillar is a measurement of how a company, its employees, its products, and the community it operates in are supported and often challenged. For this episode, we show you why that all matters for measuring a company’s market performance.

    Social Risks and Opportunities for Corporates: Long-Term Performance in Global Equity Markets

    6 mins read Blog | Aug 1, 2024 | Liz Houston, Drashti Shah, Xinxin Wang

    What goes into an analysis of financially material social risks and opportunities? And what does it mean for a company’s market performance? Our analysis found that scoring on social-risk themes was a key indicator of performance. 

    The Luxury of Love

    Podcast | Feb 16, 2024 | Michael Disabato, Liz Houston

    Valentine’s Day is replete with marketing by luxury brands attempting to capture the eyes of anxious lovers wanting to do right by their partners during the holiday. But what can you know about the product you’re buying from a luxury company? Can you know where its raw materials are sourced? Or where that material is produced? And who’re running these luxurious companies? We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of ESG now.

    The Sustainability and Climate Trends to Watch for 2024

    Podcast | Dec 15, 2023 | Liz Houston

    We think 2024 is going to be a big year! From extreme heat hitting home and work, to the frothy wonderland of AI bumping against data privacy risks and scarce talent, to the role that private capital is going to play in the climate transition, and so much more. Join us as we take a sneak peek at next year's sustainability and climate trends.

    Textile Waste and Travelling Skirts

    Podcast | Sep 8, 2023 | Liz Houston

    With fashion brands now producing 52 “micro seasons” a year, more and more clothing is being unsold or discarded. And recycling clothing is more difficult than you may think. As the EU looks to increase accountability for post-consumer waste, we take a look at what it could mean for clothing companies and their investors.

    The Labor of ESG

    Podcast | Feb 10, 2023 | Liz Houston

    There have been over 70,000 people laid off from their jobs in the tech industry – an amount unseen since the dot.com bubble burst. Layoffs are an inevitable part of a capitalist system and, so, come with the territory for companies. But what is not inevitable is the reaction the surviving employees have to seeing their friends and colleagues let go: will they be angry at the company they still work for? Motivated? Fearful? ESG tries to assess the long-term effects that layoffs have on a company performance. In this episode, we discuss how ESG does this and why it is important.