This new section of our web is going to be dedicated to showcase some of the Magazine’s articles in order to gain visibility for our collaborator’s work. We believe that the Magazine has some excellent, innovative and informative content, hence we choose to start to share them on our website as well. In this article we are going to focus on a couple of interesting commentary from our selectors.
Corona Virus brought us one of the most severe world economic crisis, with impacts on the financial markets and with new questions for investors. Where should I invest? In which type of assets? What is the best method to select the companies to invest in a period were uncertainty will prevail for some time? During many years, in the beginning of this century, there was a long academical debate about the returns of sustainable investment funds: were these funds profitable? Were they just a philanthropic tool? After an immense amount of research both by academics and practitioners, it became clear that sustainable investment usually outperform the mainstream indexes when markets are positive, and when markets are down their decrease is less than the mainstream, and therefore they outperform as well.
We expect the future to be different as the crisis will be a catalyst for change. We hope that the positive “proof of concept” that the crisis represents will put significantly more impetus behind other sustainability trends.
Raul Mateos, Spain
When selecting ESG funds, my preference has been to exclude category 1 and to favour funds run by pure play sustainable asset managers/investment teams who have demonstrated a clear commitment and passion for the asset class developed over a number of years.
Neil Clare, United Kingdom
One of the latest additions in our approved fund list is the Candriam Bonds Euro High Yield fund, which is a pure euro corporate high yield credit fund.
Kalinka Dyankova, United Kingdom
One of the latest additions in our approved fund list is the Candriam Bonds Euro High Yield fund, which is a pure euro corporate high yield credit fund.
Boris Davet, Netherlands
We conducted two interesting searches: Global Listed Impact where we select Better World Fund of Montanaro and European Sustainable Credit where we including Kempen Euro Sustainable Credit Fund.
Pieter Laan, Netherlands
Our philosophy leads us to select two different categories of funds: labelled or non-labelled funds managed by companies with strong ESG integration standards like Vontobel or Sycomore and thematic funds, for example Fidelity Sustainable Water & Waste and Pictet Global Environment.
Lucas Strojny, France
In our portfolios, sustainability is a basic theme. The Wheb Sustainability Fund is one of our favourite and oldest SRI holdings. Recently we add a long short market neutral strategy, ECO Advisors ESG Absolute Return Fund, and a global equity all cap strategy, J Safra Sarasin Sustainable Equity – Global Thematics.
Edmond Schaff, France
Are convinced that the integration of ESG factors into its investment selection process can improve the returns of risk-adjusted investments in the long run. The implementation of the ESG policy is part of the AXA Group’s commitments and values.
Antoine Machado, France
Outperformance in a period of volatility is no small thing, and the ESG strategies had the chance to prove their superiority during this crisis. In our focus list we are aware of sustainable investment and we find funds from BlackRock, Amundi or Pictet AM among others.
Spyros Agrianitis, Greece
We see good progress in ESG investment being made by Asset Managers likes of BlueBay, NN Investment Partners, Schroders, Hermes, and others but there is still some way to go across the industry.
Brian O’Rourke, Ireland
