ESG and Ethical Investing - Articles & White Papers

What’s driving increased demand for sustainable investment fixed income indexes? What are the implementation challenges of ESG in fixed income?

Welcome to terra incognita, a new era in which the certainties that a generation of investors have grown so used to have started to crumble before our very eyes. Confusion has taken center stage on financial markets.

Institutional investors are stepping up their efforts to decarbonise real estate portfolios - but the asset class poses some unique challenges. Drawing on insights from asset owners, consultants and M&G’s own real estate experts, this report highlights the need for new approaches in key areas such as targeting whole-life…

Long-term capitalism is not a new idea, but it has come into sharp focus in recent years. Today, a wide range of voices are increasingly calling on companies to look beyond maximizing profits in the short term, and companies themselves are increasingly focusing on the benefits of engaging with their key constituents.

In this Indices Insights Summer Summaries edition, Robeco provides a brief recap of their latest articles related to sustainable investing.

Humanity’s strategy for reaching net zero could be crudely described as 'electrify everything we can and decarbonise electricity generation'. There is, of course, much more to it than this. But it is true that the virtual elimination of carbon emissions from electricity generation is a necessary condition for reaching net…

Looking at the evolution of ESG investing, at the challanges facing portfolio managers in this area and at how to overcome them.

There is a growing shift in capital allocation from public to private markets, signaling a swing in traditional asset allocation percentages. This paper digs into how to measure and manage the impact that environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors can have on the value of these securities. 

In this paper, we…

It could be argued that – following certain events of the last few years in the investment world – the appeal of the superstar fund manager is on the decline, and that there’s a lot to be said for a consistent, reliable team-based approach. Yet that’s not news to us. A diverse team in terms of gender, culture, education and…

Index strategies can target well-defined decarbonisation pathways that may help to avoid climate risks. LGIM explains the how, why and when.

This paper surveys the academic literature on the governance of for-profit, publicly traded corporations. We first address corporate objectives. Specifically, we discuss how shareholder value maximization relates to alternative doctrines such as stakeholder capitalism, and why the alternatives are likely to fall short of…

Product circularity is about more than just recycling – the concept needs to be built into the design and planning stage if it is to truly deliver on its potential. Circular business models offer tangible benefits to the management of real-world problems such as climate change, working conditions, and threats to biodiversity…

The demand from both investors and regulators for better Scope 3 emissions data reporting is only likely to increase. For investors who take the time now to look 'under the microScope', the ability to analyse the total emissions of a company or portfolio will be a powerful addition to their toolbox. Our new research paper…

RBC Global Asset Management believes regulation is going to play an increasingly important role across all areas and participants within ESG. A variety of professional data providers construct and provide this regulation in the form of quantitative metrics of companies’ ESG performance, influencing the investment decisions…

It is clear that ESG has become an important factor in investment decision-making, but to what degree has it directly influenced the holdings of institutional investors and their engagement over proxy votes? What about the investment strategies of short sellers?

Investors are embracing sustainable investment strategies in passive fixed income like never before. Billions of dollars are flowing into ESG-tilted sovereign debt as asset owners try to mitigate their exposure to climate risks. But there are unintended consequences, notably related to biases present in the ESG assessment…

Research has found that on a number of levels, nature is unravelling. This poses an existential threat to societies and economies – and by extension asset owners and investors.

In the past few years, bond markets have witnessed the emergence of a new set of instruments that are categorised under the now relatively well-recognised term 'sustainable debt'. Sustainable bonds aim to help governments and corporates to raise proceeds to finance specific sustainable activities.

Faced with growing climate risk, investors are increasingly focused on tracking and reducing their portfolio’s carbon emissions exposure in global equities. There are practical and methodological challenges in tracking these reduction targets, and a consensus has yet to develop around the best metrics and measures to assess…

With passage of the IRA, the U.S. joins the ranks of nations that have codified climate action into law and officially reestablishes itself as a credible influencer on the stage of global climate talks.