👉 Background: Xpansiv is a commodities exchange that calls itself the 'ground zero for net-zero commitments'. It lets investors swap things like carbon offsets and renewable energy credits. It merged with an Aussie company called CBL in 2019.

👉 What happened: Xpansiv was planning to list on the ASX, but the company struggled to find investors to tip in cash at the valuation it wanted. Now, private equity giant Blackstone has come to the rescue with a $400 million capital injection.

👉 What else: This move shows that Blackstone’s on board with the theory that environmental commodities are a critical new asset class.

What's the key learning?

💡An asset class is a group of investments that are considered similar in terms of risk or characteristics. Traditional asset classes include things like stocks, real estate or even gold.

💡 As the world evolves, we're seeing new asset classes enter the arena. We’ve seen crypto evolve as an asset class... But the hot, new asset class is environmental commodities, like carbon credits and water rights.

💡Blackstone reckons this asset class will become more and more traded because governments and companies have committed to achieve large climate change targets. So that's where Xpansiv comes in ✅.

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