August 2022
25Aug

Florida State Board bans ESG considerations in managing pension plan

Florida State Board of Administration, Tallahassee, passed a resolution Tuesday that all decisions related to the investment management of the Florida Retirement System will not include ESG considerations. The trustees of the board, which oversees a total of $240.1 billion, including the $189.7 billion Florida Retirement System, are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody. A news release from Mr. DeSantis' office said the trustees passed the resolution to update the fiduciary duties...

August 25, 2022
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24Aug

United States: ESG And Political Climate Changes

Preparing for the increasingly complex maze of state-level regulations regarding ESG-based investments. Amid growing interest by some investment managers to consider environmental implications and anticipated regulatory change in their portfolios, Environmental Social Governance (ESG) investments are also increasingly catching the attention of state regulators. Along with public warnings from state attorneys general, some states are reacting by barring major banks from government contracts and pulling money from asset managers they deem as overstepping on climate action. Before determining an investment strategy,...

August 24, 2022
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22Aug

Renewable energy’s charm still growing for investors

Amid a just-passed U.S. climate bill unleashing record investment in domestic clean energy, energy transition efforts in the U.K. and Europe well underway and energy security concerns raised by the Ukraine war, institutional investors seem poised for the next level of investing in renewables. "Over the last year alone, we've witnessed the highest levels of interest in renewables we've ever seen from institutional investors," said Matt Setchell, co-head of Octopus Energy Generation's fund management team in London. Part of Octopus...

August 22, 2022
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18Aug

Investors join forces to address financial, environmental risks of water

A coalition of 64 institutional investors is collaborating to get world's biggest corporate water users and to address water as a financial risk. The Valuing Water Finance Initiative represents institutional investors with a collective $9.8 trillion in assets, and is coordinated by shareholder advocacy group Ceres and the government of the Netherlands. Read also Europe’s gas crisis: what does it mean for investors? Pension fund members include the $459.4 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento; $301.6 billion California State Teachers' Retirement...

August 18, 2022
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08Aug

México. Esos 96 mil pesos en su Afore

Por Jonathan Ruiz Torre Alcanza como para llenar el tanque del carro durante dos años, eso que cada mexicano tiene guardado en su cuenta de Afore ¿Y qué hacen con ese dinero quienes lo cuidan mientras ustedes se retiran? El saldo promedio de las cuentas de retiro es de 96 mil pesos. Revisen el suyo, para saber si están por debajo de esa cifra, o si gozan del privilegio de superar al resto. Ese dato viene de una cuenta muy simple: dividir...

August 8, 2022
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05Aug

Green bonds poised for revival after shaky start to 2022 — report

Green bond issuance got off to a shaky start in 2022, but picked up in the second quarter, according to data from the Climate Bonds Initiative published on Thursday . The investor-focused non-profit organization promotes large-scale investment in the low-carbon economy. It screens self-labeled green bonds, including green, social, sustainability, sustainability-linked and transition labeled debt. In the first half of 2022, issuance of bonds aligned with international climate targets reached a combined volume of $417.8 billion, a 27% drop from the...

August 5, 2022
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02Aug

UK. Oxford, FCA team up on sustainable finance lab

The U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority is partnering with the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group on an innovation lab for ESG practitioners and regulators. Announced July 20, the Oxford Sustainable Finance Lab is scheduled to open in the fall at Oxford University in England. Oxford researchers will spend time with practitioners from financial institutions, regulators, central banks, government departments and professional organizations. The goal is "nurturing interactions between different parts of the financial system and (to) break down barriers between them, providing a...

August 2, 2022
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02Aug

The evolution of sustainability in equity investing

Equity as an asset class has a long history rooted in sustainability and shareholder engagement. Even in the 19th century, equity investors used voting and engagement to influence how companies behave. Efficient use of capital, dividend policy, and strategy were typically on the agenda. In the 1970s, equity investors started considering ethical values, triggered by global abhorrence of South Africa’s apartheid regime. In the nineties, initial ethical screenings expanded to embed environmental, social and governance factors in capital market decisions....

August 2, 2022
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July 2022
27Jul

It’s good more funds are looking to become environmentally friendly, but this could lead to greenwashing

There have been a large number of funds rebranding recently to include the phrase sustainable or ESG in their name, which raises suspicions about the potential for greenwashing – not the kind of recycling that climate crisis campaigners had in mind. Greenwashing is used to describe the way funds may claim “green’” credentials to improve their environmental, social and governance appeal to investors. By adding the phrase ESG to an existing funds it’s a bit like a company creating a huge...

July 27, 2022
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26Jul

German government invests pension assets in oil, gas firms despite ESG index switch

The German government continues to invest public pension and social security assets in oil, coal and gas companies on the equity market, despite announcing that it would switch to an ESG index by the end of the year. According to a report by investigative documentary series Panorama, the German government invests a total of €573.59m in oil, gas and coal companies on the equity market to finance the pensions of civil servants. The government has confirmed that it has invested more...

July 26, 2022
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