.png?width=200&height=78&name=CH%20Diligence%20(thicker%20line-white).png "CH Diligence (thicker line-white)")
Established in 2012 following the sale of Vision TV (a multi-faith television channel), the Inspirit Foundation seeks to support young change leaders inclusion, and promote pluralism through media and arts. Further, its 2016-2021 strategic plan identified islamophobia and reconciliation as priority issues. The Foundation had CA$ 36.7 million of assets under management as December 31, 2017.
In 2016, the Inspirit Foundation committed to aligning its entire portfolio with its organizational values . As such, 20% of assets will be allocated to private investments contributing to an inclusive society through mission and program related investing. Remaining assets will be invested using positive screen, ESG analysis and moving towards a lower carbon portfolio. In 2018, the Inspirit Foundation has made strides by aligning 84% of its portfolio with the strategic plan.
Fully Committed – Our Roadmap Towards a 100% Impact Portfolio
IPE: Climate finance think tank 2° Investing Initiative is encouraging investors and banks to support efforts to build evidence of financial institutions’ impact with regard to climate change.
Bloomberg: Get serious on climate change risks. That’s the message from Australia’s prudential regulator as it joined counterparts in the U.K., the Netherlands and Singapore in ramping up its surveillance of how ready financial institutions are to deal with climate change.
Citywire Selector: UK asset management firms face an increased ESG workload to meet growing demand from clients, while regulatory pressures around stewardship will start to add up.
IPE: Steve Waygood, chief responsible investment officer at Aviva Investors, has called for the creation of an international panel on climate finance at the upcoming United Nations climate change summit (COP26) to improve negotiators’ understanding of the capital markets and the real economy.
UT News: Climate change is being felt in a corner of the world different from where one might expect: Wall Street, where some of the biggest investors are starting to take action.
IPE: Impact investment is now a widespread strategy among institutional investors in the Nordic region, according to a new survey that shows 43% of the entities currently invest using this environmental, social and governance (ESG) approach.
Pensions & Investments: Support for ESG-related shareholder resolutions has climbed steadily in recent years among asset managers, but several of the biggest managers vote against ESG resolutions more often than not.
Bloomberg: Harris Associates, the $120 billion money manager, formally joined in the responsible investing trend a year ago, pledging to press companies to disclose how climate change and social issues affect their bottom line.
Top 1000 Funds: In the Chinese language, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters — 危机 (weiji): where危 (wei) means crisis or danger, 机(ji) means opportunity.
First State Super was established in 1992 to provide public sector employees in New South Wales with superannuation and retirement services. The Superannuation scheme manages $100 billion of assets on behalf of 800,000 individuals as at January 21, 2020.
First State Super considers sustainability issues in the investment decision-making of all of its portfolios. Apart from the tobacco industry, the Super fund does not generally exclude sectors. Instead, it prefers to engage with portfolio companies to improve practices. Its Socially Responsible Investment funds have stricter exclusion policies on nuclear power (including uranium), armaments, gambling, alcohol, inhumane animal testing, logging (of old growth forests), pornography, and fossil fuels. Finally, in 2016, First State Super adopted a Climate Change Plan, which sets out their approach to carbon foot-printing, risk management, and scenario analysis.
Top 1000: Internationally only a handful of pension funds have committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and have developed an approach to achieving that goal.
Reuters: European leveraged loan and high-yield bond buyers are pushing companies they invest in to have a standard disclosure on environmental, social and governance, a move that is likely to turn up the heat on ESG adoption in the leveraged finance market.
Institutional Investor: How do the largest charitable foundations rate on manager diversity? A new study from the Knight Foundation offers a glimpse inside the portfolios of some of the 50 biggest foundations in the U.S.
Reuters: Agencies that issue ratings on how much companies and financial products are exposed to climate change need better supervision to help crack down on “greenwashing”.
Institutional Investor: Senior investment professionals at hedge funds and long-only firms earned an average of $825,000 last year — at least, the men did. Female portfolio managers and senior analysts made $630,000 on average, including base pay and bonus compensation.
IPE: There is lots of debate about what constitutes a green financial service or product, and what more generally greenness amounts to. Most parties to that debate have assumed that holding green investments is sufficient to be green.
Bloomberg: BlackRock Inc.’s Paris office was briefly barricaded on Monday by climate activists who sprayed red paint on the floors and covered the walls with graffiti before leaving the premises of the world’s largest asset manager.
Bloomberg: The number of venture capital firms with two or more female partners doubled last year to 14%, suggesting a cultural change is under way in one of finance’s most intractable all-boys’ clubs.
The Asset: European Union member states and the European Parliament are soon expected to adopt a so-called taxonomy for classifying green investments, after reaching agreement last month on a list of sustainable economic activities. Once the new system enters into force, most likely this year, the European Commission will use this list to determine which financial assets and products are sustainable.
Established in 1997, the Canopus Foundation is a German private family foundation seeking to improve energy access, and promote education and science for a sustainable economy.
The Foundation applies the Venture Philanthropy model, which seeks to apply the principles of Venture Capital investing to philanthropy, hence creating impact. Since 2017, the Canopus Foundation has built a portfolio of mission-related investments in partner companies in Germany, Senegal and Rwanda which seek to improve accessibility to water in Western Africa, for example.
Financial Post: Methane leaks are making the climate crisis worse faster, but companies and investors still find them hard to trace.
Bloomberg: Neuberger Berman Group LLC is walking the walk. The asset manager signed a loan this week that links its own costs to environmental, social and governance factors. That makes Neuberger Berman the first U.S. asset manager to ink a sustainability-linked loan.
Bloomberg : Hedge funds, many of which have been slow to adopt environmental and social strategies, are pointing the finger elsewhere. Money managers are faulting inconsistent data and a shortage of expertise.
Bloomberg: The $3.8 trillion municipal-bond market has found a new tool in its effort to understand the impact of climate change: the array of satellites orbiting high above Earth.
Financial Times: Barclays is under intense pressure over its role in financing fossil fuel producers after a second influential group of big shareholders demanded the British lender adopts a stricter climate change policy. [Full article available to Financial Times subscribers.]
Bloomberg: Singapore plans to include a broader range of climate change-related risks in a future stress test of its financial industry, a government minister said.
Bloomberg: Green bond investors, celebrating a landmark step toward establishing market standards, are starting to worry that the next big thing in sustainable finance could undermine those efforts.
IPE: The €465bn Dutch civil service scheme ABP has announced plans for its investment portfolio to be carbon neutral by 2050. This vision was part of a five-year plan for its sustainability policy, which was launched this morning.
IPE: A single benchmark in a continuously diversifying market of more than three million individual products might easily fade into insignificance, like an unidentified star in the night sky. There is every possibility that the new European Union climate benchmark labels could experience this fate.
The California Health Care Foundation was established in 1996, following the conversion of Blue Cross of California from a not-for-profit health plan to a for-profit corporation. The Foundation seeks to improve access to coverage and care, to promote high-value care, and provide research, support health care journalism, train leaders, and develop cross-sector networks. As at December 31, 2018, the California Health Care Foundation had $808 million of assets under management.
In addition to conducting research and grant-making, the California Health Care Foundation has established the CHCF Health Innovation Fund, a program-related investment initiative, to support market-based solutions with the potential to improve access and health outcomes for Californians with low incomes. Investments must provide new or more timely access to 100,000 Californians and/or deliver $25M in annual cost savings to the California health care system.
On a Mission: Investing for US Health Impact in 2014
Investing in Health Care That Works for All Californians
IPE: Denmark’s ATP has blacklisted Mexico’s biggest mining company Grupo México, after multiple efforts to engage with the firm over dangers posed by a new tailings dam at the site of a disastrous spill in 2014.
Institutional Investor: Oaktree Capital Management has begun scoring companies in emerging markets based on environmental, social, and governance criteria, a move designed to give it a competitive edge in regions where ESG investing has lagged.
Investment Europe: The use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings has increased sharply in recent years and entered the mainstream investment arena. Such scores and ratings now constitute an important element of security, fund and mandate selection, which has led to strong growth in the number of ESG rating and data providers.
Financial Times: European investors poured more than twice as much cash into sustainable funds last year than in 2018 in response to fears about the threats posed by climate change to the global economy. [Full article available to Financial Times subscribers.]
Citywire Selector: Companies will have to face up to increased funding pressures and the prospect of ratings downgrades as the full weight of major asset managers going green comes to pass.
Bloomberg: Nine of the biggest ESG mutual funds in the U.S. outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index last year, and seven of them beat their market benchmarks over the past five years.
Bloomberg: The Bank of England faces an uphill climb to get the finance industry ready for one of its biggest threats: the climate. About 80% of senior finance executives believe their firms “lack well-developed strategies to manage the risks of climate change,”.
Top 1000 Funds: The UK’s £30 billion Brunel Pension Partnership is taking investing in a carbon zero future to a whole new level. The asset manager for 10 local authority schemes, already well-known for its investment track record and expertise in this area, has just published a far-reaching Climate Change Policy filled with actions and deadlines linked to the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Financial Times: State Street’s $3.1tn investment arm is planning to start voting against the boards of big companies that lag behind on environmental, social and governance standards, a threat that is likely to reverberate in many corporate boardrooms. [Full article available to Financial Times subscribers.]
Castle Hall helps investors build comprehensive due diligence programs across hedge fund, private equity and long only portfolios More →
Montreal
1080 Côte du Beaver Hall, Suite 904
Montreal, QC
Canada, H2Z 1S8
+1-450-465-8880
Halifax
84 Chain Lake Drive, Suite 501
Halifax, NS
Canada, B3S 1A2
+1-902-429-8880
Manila
Ground Floor, Three E-com Center
Mall of Asia Complex
Pasay City, Metro Manila
Philippines 1300
Sydney
Level 36 Governor Phillip Tower
1 Farrer Place Sydney 2000
Australia
+61 (2) 8823 3370
Abu Dhabi
Floor No.15 Al Sarab Tower,
Adgm Square,
Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Tel: +971 (2) 694 8510
Copyright © 2021 Entreprise Castle Hall Alternatives, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Service and Privacy Policy