Long-term engagement with companies on environmental, social and governance issues has been touted as a route to impact positive change, but a new paper from the Alternative Investment Management Association is arguing that short selling has a role to play in the realm of ESG. “Short selling can be an excellent tool for achieving two common […]
Institutional investors looking to score potential investments on environmental, social and governance factors now have a new option. Bloomberg is launching its own set of ESG scores, available to its terminal users. Initially, 252 companies in the oil and gas sector will receive environmental and social scores and more than 4,300 companies across several industries will be scored on […]
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is updating its policy on sustainable investing to reflect an increased conviction in the importance of environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities. “ESG considerations are inextricably linked to our ability to successfully achieve our investment objectives,” said Richard Manley, managing director and head of sustainable investing at the CPPIB, in a […]
With its recent acquisition of environmental, social and governance data analytics provider Sustainalytics, Morningstar Inc. is taking aim at the disparate ESG disclosure requirements still hampering the investment industry. In a recent report, Morningstar sussed out some of the issues hindering ESG measurement tools. “Simply put, ESG disclosures from issuers are all too often inconsistent and […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s 2019 climate change report contains its first-ever, independently assured portfolio carbon footprint. Even as the plan’s assets grew in 2019, it’s overall carbon footprint fell by about 15 per cent, driven in large part by the sale of a particularly high-emitting private asset, according to the report, which was assured […]
The British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the AustralianSuper and two Dutch pension funds — APG and PGGM — are jointly establishing a responsible investing platform. The sustainable development investments asset owner platform, which will be available through distribution partner Qontigo, features standard and artificial intelligence-driven data that enables investors to assess companies on their contribution […]
The vast majority (81 per cent) of global pension plan sponsors said they have allocations to some kind of climate change-related funds, according to a new survey from CREATE-Research. Specifically, when it comes to passive funds, 44 per cent of respondents said they allocated at least some of the passive segment of their portfolio to a climate change-related […]
The Principles for Responsible Investment has released a framework for investors to help focus on aligning their activities with the UN’s sustainable development goals. “Issues such as human rights abuses, climate change and inequitable social structures seriously threaten the longterm performance of economies, investors’ portfolios and the world in which beneficiaries live,” the report said. […]
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is joining a consortium of other institutional investors to invest in certain gas pipeline assets of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. The assets are valued at $20.7 billion and the other investors include Global Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset Management Inc., Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, NH Investment & Securities Co Ltd. and Snam, an […]
Sustainable indexes largely outperformed during the first quarter of 2020 amid market turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to BlackRock Inc.’s latest sustainability report. “While this short time period is not determinative, it aligns with the resilience we have seen in sustainable strategies during prior downturns,” said the report. The big question for institutional […]