Kempen Capital Management has decided to stop investing in tobacco, it announced today.
The €60bn Dutch asset manager will exclude all investments in the tobacco industry from its funds, although the policy does not apply to mandates, bespoke investment portfolios and multi-manager funds.
Kempen has said its funds will be “tobacco-free” by the end of this year.
Narina Mnatsakanian, director of impact and responsible investment at Kempen, said: “Tobacco has a proven negative impact on society and many international standards support this position.
“In the experience of Kempen’s investment staff, active shareholder engagement with the tobacco industry alone is not enough to drive the fundamental change required.”
A spokesman told IPE the policy would impact two funds, “the credit fund directly and the fund of hedge funds indirectly”, with excluded stocks equating to roughly 1% of the index.
BNP Paribas and Robeco have also excluded tobacco investments this year, extending existing bans on tobacco investment for sustainable funds to their mainstream funds.
The €3.4bn pension fund of Dutch technical research institute TNO recently announced it would divest its tobacco holdings because it did not fit with its policy for responsible investment.
Other pension funds to have turned their back on tobacco include major Dutch schemes PFZW and ABP, and French funds FRR and Ircantec.
In the UK, defined contribution master trust NEST recently announced its first steps into commodity investment, with its £200m (€226m) segregated mandate excluding companies focused on thermal coal, palm oil, uranium and tobacco.
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