Investments and Pensions Europe (June 20)
“Four German states have recently revised their sustainable investment strategies, sticking to stricter ESG standards, a move that has caused shifts to the allocation of public pension assets worth close to €30bn.” The states (North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg) “switched to a Paris Aligned Benchmark (PAB), lining up with the EU taxonomy and United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to invest their assets.”
Tags: €30bn, Allocation, Assets, ESG standards, EU, Germany, PAB, Public pension, Revised, SDGs, Strategies, Stricter, Sustainable investment
Investment Week (October 29)
“Sustainable investment cynics have nearly halved in three years, while climate change has become the focus of shareholder engagement, according to Schroders Institutional Investor Study 2019…. The study found that the proportion of investors globally who do not believe in sustainable investment has fallen from 20% in 2017 to 11% this year.”
Institutional Investor (August Issue)
“Morgan Stanley and other banks get serious about sustainable investment.” In April, Morgan Stanley launched an Investing with Impact Platform, which will group sustainable investments (currently some 70 different products) around four categories. UBS is pushing its “analysts to integrate sustainability factors into their company and sector coverage” and now requires “all analysts to include a section on ‘sustainable innovation’ in their annual sector outlook reports.” In addition, Royal Bank of Canada seeded an impact investing fund which it may open to investors next year.
Institutional Investor (May 15)
Emphasizing the growing importance of environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) to investors, two major pension funds announced sustainable investment initiatives. The $236 billion California State Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) pension plan will “fully integrate ESG factors in all investment decisions, and across all asset classes.” Meanwhile, the $152.9 billion California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) has pledged that all of its “external managers will include an analysis of how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues factor into their strategies.” CalSTRS CEO Jack Ehnes said, “No matter what you’re doing with us, there are ESG risks that we think will have a long-term impact on the portfolio, and we want to be sure that you’re articulating for us how you’re looking at them.”
Tags: CalPERs, CalSTRS, ESG, Pension funds, Sustainable investment
