Latest Special Reports – Page 117
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Special Report
How to value the future
In this comment, we report the results of research on pension fund trustee decision-making relevant to socially responsible investment (SRI). Based upon a sample of over 150 UK trustees, it is shown that a majority of trustees believe there are significant barriers to the implementation of SRI. At the same ...
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Special Report
Land of opportunity
“Companies addressing issues such as global demographic developments, rising consumption of raw materials and energy and the increasing environmental impact and effects of these are acquiring competitive advantage over those that were not” says Andreas Knoerzer, head of sustainable investments at Bank Sarasin. Sarasin has been involved in sustainability ...
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Special Report
Driving the outcome
As the links between intangibles – environmental policy for example – and corporate performance are strengthened so it is clear that they also are generating an increasingly large portion of corporate growth and shareholder value. This explains the increasing demand for information about these aspects of corporate activity, from the ...
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Special Report
Taking things seriously
Socially responsible investment specialists EIRIS have found that 24% of companies worldwide have good or advanced systems in place to manage social, environmental and other ethical (SEE) risks. Published recently, the survey, entitled ‘SEE Risk Management: An analysis of its adoption by companies’, analysed companies in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region ...
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Special Report
Going with the two-way flow
Only around 20% of company reports include information on stakeholder engagement, according to a recent survey – Corporate Responsibility – a United State? – carried out by Context, a London-based corporate responsibility (CR) communications and strategy consultancy. “One can assume that if a company is not reporting on it then ...
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Special Report
Inform, on form
SRI is still a relatively new concept which is still considered by many to be some way down the list of priorities as companies and their senior executives feel the pressure to focus more and more on the bottom line. The reason it finds itself so far down the list ...
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Special Report
A question of best practice
For trustees and board members of pension funds in Europe, life has never been harder. A decade ago, things looked rosy. Pension funds were in surplus, and funding levels were not a concern. Pension schemes were posting strong double digit returns, allowing contribution holidays, and spending almost next to no ...
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Special Report
Structured approaches
A two-tiered internal governance structure is being proposed in the Netherlands, the country that is leading on governance in Europe, and where the issue has been under debate for the last few years. Currently, according to the OECD, pension funds are incorporated legal entities separate from the sponsor, and have ...
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Special Report
Crying need for governance
Most industry participants agree that education has to be the foremost concern. “A lot of boards until recently have been made up of gifted amateurs rather than professionals. There is an expectation that this will change,” says Elizabeth Renshaw-Ames, a worldwide partner at Mercer Investment Consulting. She points out that ...
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Special Report
Double jeopardy
The emerging market spells a quantum leap in investment risk for most pension funds which now view them as an essential alpha generator as traditional asset classes have become both more unpredictable and disappointing in terms of their returns. But what of the newly coined ‘emerging emerging market?’ A class ...
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Special Report
Going for engagement
By the end of the first quarter of next year ABN Amro will have rolled out its SRI offering to France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. The offering is based on the approach adopted by the bank’s Swedish subsidiary Banco Fonder, the main centre of ABN Amro’s SRI activity ...
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Special Report
Missing the ESG sea-change
Fiduciary responsibility has been reinvented to include environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations – this was the clear message to pension funds and their trustees, as well as the consultants and asset managers who work with them that emerged from the 2005 United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) ...
