ESG

State Street Global Advisors will sharpen its ESG efforts on climate change and corporate racial diversity in 2021, adopting a more activist approach with investee companies. In a letter to major global corporations this month (January 11), Cyrus Taraporevala, SSGA chief, says the US$3.1 trillion manager will use its financial clout to pressure companies to…

Listed infrastructure manager 4D is looking to widen its distribution reach to include the institutional market as it approaches a five-year track record of strong performance. The boutique, founded by CIO Sarah Shaw and global equity strategist Greg Goodsall in 2015, is a part of the Bennelong Funds Management multi-affiliate group. Its concentrated global portfolio…

Almost all global pension investors expect post-COVID financial markets to follow a ‘W’ path or play an accordion-like tune, a new survey has found. Whatever the shape of the future, it will not be smooth. The study, by UK-based research firm Create, shows almost half of the respondents projected a W-shaped recovery ahead while 36…

The debate over climate change has been too polarised along political lines, says politician Zali Steggal. It should be about setting hard targets, says one of Australia’s biggest investors, Damian Graham. Graham, the CIO of Aware Super, and Steggall, the conservative independent federal MP for Warringah in Sydney, joined with three others for a webinar…

Australia and New Zealand have scored the highest in the latest annual ESG ratings by GRESB, the leading data collector and assessment organisation for property and infrastructure. ‘Oceania’ was first, followed by Asia, then Europe, then the ‘Americas’. GRESB (Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) says in its annual global real estate assessment, published in Amsterdam…

Australia has a long way to go to catch up to its major trading partners in its planned spend on new infrastructure, notwithstanding Prime Minister Morrison’s pledge of $100 billion over the next 10 years. This should be something for investors to savour, as well as those who benefit from the multiplier effect for employment….

Governance is the pillar of environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles that investors have been actively considering for the longest period of time. This is not surprising, as in some ways, it could be said that governance is probably the most important aspect of ESG. An organisation’s board’s role is to appoint the CEO and…

While the active versus passive debate rolls on, and on, across the investment world, some active managers have gone to the ‘dark side’, at least partially, by adding more quantitative inputs for new strategies, such as thematic investing. The concept of ‘thematic’ investing, which describes the strategy of identifying sectors of the economy expected to…

Melbourne: ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is one of the fastest growing trends ininvesting globally. It has become part of the funds management zeitgeist, aided, in part, by research pointing to betterperformance by fund managers that favour companies with good ESG policies and practices.The recent decision by the Trump administration to restrict the ability of…

In the wake of the pandemic, investors have continued to pile money into variously labelled ESG/sustainable funds. Are they doing what they say?