A letter from Insight Investment calling for greater green bond issuance from banks highlights the lack of depth in the green bond space, despite the market growing significantly over the last year and the first green bond funds reaching their three-year track record.
While environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors have become an inherent part of risk management, socially responsible investment (SRI) products are, by comparison, designed to meet the demand of specific investors, according to Aberdeen Standard’s William Scholes.
BMO Global Asset Management has expanded its socially-responsible fund range with the launch of a Euro corporate bond fund.
Asset managers are increasingly repurposing underperforming funds into ESG products to jump on the sustainable investing trend, but an announcement this week from Franklin Templeton Investments has taken the process to new heights as it repositions a global equities fund into a thematic climate change product.
Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund has returned 1.6 percentage points less on an annualised basis over the last 12 years because it excluded some stocks on ethical grounds.
Franklin Templeton Investments has “repositioned” its existing Global (Euro) Fund to focus on companies actively reducing their carbon footprint which it expects will boost returns.
Italy’s Generali Group is to increase investments in “green” sectors by €3.5bn by 2020, mainly by ploughing money into bonds that finance environmentally beneficial projects and investing directly in cleaner infrastructure.
Nasdaq’s Scandinavian fund platform, Nordic Fund Market, has signed a distribution agreement with UK fund manager Kames Capital to offer its range of 11 Dublin-registered funds.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest at $1trn (€808.8bn), has set out a series of strong anti-corruption measures it expects the 8,985 companies it invests in to have.
Invesco has expanded its Luxembourg-domiciled Ucits range with the launch of the Sustainable Allocation and Global High Yield Short Term Bond funds.
Flows into European equity exchange traded products (ETP) rebounded in 2017, after an annus horribilis in 2016, and the trend is set to continue thanks to MiFID II’s transparency requirements in 2018, according to reports.
More needs to be done by the big three credit ratings agencies to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns into their issuer ratings, according to Neuberger Berman.
