ESG Special Reports – Page 31
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Special Report
Why we need whistleblowers
Keith Ambachtsheer, a pensions guru on both sides of the Atlantic, has a different slant on what can make defined benefit schemes sustainable long term. Speaking recently in the US to a conference of teacher retirement plans, he told delegates: “You need a whistleblower.” Toronto-based Ambachtsheer, who acts as a ...
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Special Report
Listening to the investors
Corporate governance has been described as the “architecture of accountability”. How satisfied are primary investors with the accountability of real estate managers and their funds? IPE asked several major investors for their views on the subject. Our questions – which were supplied by Jonathan Fenton at law firm DLA ...
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Special Report
US voting demands
A group of 14 institutional investors from the UK, Netherlands, Australia and Canada have called for an overhaul of the American voting standard regarding the election of US corporate directors. They say it is “prone to abuse” and “inconsistent” with democratic values. In a letter addressed to the American Bar ...
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Special Report
Model for governance?
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries - in Austria, the Netherlands and Finland - the same question: ‘Is there or should there be a basic European template that could be adopted for pension fund governance or should it be left to national practice?’ Here are their answers: ...
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Special Report
Price of taking responsibility
Environmental considerations are set to play an increasingly significant role in investment policy following two major new developments earlier this year. The Kyoto Protocol became a legally binding treaty in February. It aims to slow down global warming by demanding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2% ...
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Special Report
Digging up the dirt
Today extractive companies - those specialised in extracting natural resources from the ground - are operating in environments that are very different to those in which they operated 10 or more years ago. The oil industry is a good example. As oil reserves in areas such as the North Sea ...
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Special Report
Investors act on climate change
On 14 September, in the New York offices of investment bank JP Morgan, around 200 institutional investors, financial analysts and government officials gathered to hear the results of the third Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire. Speaking were luminaries including Margaret Beckett, the UK’s secretary of state for the environment; Jim ...
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Special Report
Hope for German SRI?
The rather lacklustre progress of SRI in Germany’s institutional investment market was given a boost in July when the Bundesrat, the country’s upper house, passed legislation extending the SRI reporting obligation for Pensionfonds to the much more numerous and asset-rich Pensionskassen. The reporting obligation that requires funds to disclose whether ...
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Special Report
FRR reflecting interests of community
The French pensions reserve fund, Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), is in the process of devising and awarding SRI mandates. It has already appointed consultancy Bfinance to help with the request for proposals, and the tender process was launched at the end of June. The whole manager selection ...
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Special Report
Fund members' social conscience
Danish industry-wide pension fund PKA, which has assets of more than E12bn, has recently adjusted its ethical guidelines for the fund’s investments. But this is certainly not the first time that ethical investment has been on the fund’s agenda – PKA has worked with ethical aspects of its investments for ...
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Special Report
Mainstream-type returns is key
The UNISON staff pension scheme in the UK has committed all of its equities investment - two-thirds of total assets - to SRI. In September 2003, the fund put £100m (e150m) into an SRI mandate run by Morley Fund Management. At the time, it was the largest sum ever to ...
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Special Report
Encouraging change in firms
Directors of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) decided to adopt a policy of responsible investment in 1999. USS, the occupational pension fund for UK Universities, with assets of about £20bn (e30bn), is the second largest corporate pension fund in the UK. David Russell, adviser on responsible investment at USS, says ...
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Special Report
Walk before you can run
Although most people in the investment industry agree pension funds are becoming more interested in SRI, there are many different ways of approaching it. From choosing how strictly they should judge companies they invest in, to defining why they want SRI in the first place, pension funds face a series ...
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Special Report
Active dialogue comes to fore
Gradually, socially responsible investment (SRI) is becoming more ingrained in the way that participants in the market do business. A survey by Mercer Investment Consulting in April concluded that SRI practices were becoming mainstream among investment managers. Within 10 years, it said, SRI would become a common component of mainstream ...
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Special Report
It's a matter of principles
An obvious contributor to the debate on how environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues should be incorporated into investment policy is the United Nations (UN), or more precisely the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The global factor - reach, consistency and influence - is what makes it so obvious. UNEPFI ...
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Special Report
Versiko's 'passionate' team
Opportunities in the German SRI market vary, depending on one’s focus. Pensionkassen and other forms of retirement institution with deficits and minimum return guarantees on their minds are wary enough of equities as a whole, never mind new concepts which may appear at first sight to compromise the all important ...
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Special Report
Mid-summer madness
There seem to be signs of it all over the place, the only question is where to start. Okay I could start with the usual concerns - Why are long term bond interest rates so low? How low a real yield will investors in index linked bonds accept? Why have ...
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Special Report
Hungary comes of age
As market forces took hold across the former eastern bloc following the collapse of communism, the emergence of a thin layer of very wealthy individuals was one of the most visible, and disturbing developments. How can a system of supposed equality give way to such apparent inequality? Is it the ...
