.png?width=200&height=78&name=CH%20Diligence%20(thicker%20line-white).png "CH Diligence (thicker line-white)")
Counsultancy.UK: As the global economy heads into recession, it seemed that investors and executives were about to clash on environmental, social and governance spending. While investors said they were increasingly likely to divest from companies which did not take sustainability budgets seriously, one-third of executives said they were considering cutting ESG spending, as they sought to consolidate their bottom lines.
Investment Week: Private market companies are baffled by ESG reporting requirements with 90% of companies held in private equity funds unsure how to report, according to a new study by KEY ESG.
Roll Call: Investors will ramp up their scrutiny of corporate political spending this spring with a specific focus on whether companies' advocacy and lobbying align with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.
Advisor Perspectives: Six Wall Street banks are being pressed by a group of shareholders to move faster on reducing their financing of fossil fuels to meet global climate goals.
BNN Bloomberg: The UK’s proposed rules to eradicate greenwashing in investment funds set a higher bar than those already enforced in the European Union, according to one of Britain’s biggest and most influential finance industry groups.
Institutional Investor: Environmental, social, and governance issues are increasingly impacting exit opportunities for private equity firms. But keeping up with ESG standards remains an ongoing challenge, especially for mid-market managers.
CNN: ESG funds — investments that evaluate companies using environmental, social and governance factors — just survived a tumultuous 2022. They also managed to perform in line with the general market while doing so, and attract new money — a good sign for the future of responsible investing.
Yahoo Finance: The European Parliament's economic affairs committee is due to vote on cross-party compromises, seen by Reuters, on a draft law which implements remaining elements of Basel III, a global accord which forces banks to hold more capital to cope with market shocks unaided by taxpayers.
IFR: The cumulative cost of decommissioning ageing oil and gas assets may reach US$42bn by 2024, according to research company Rystad Energy, as wells are plugged and installations are dismantled and removed and the environment is restored.
CNBC: Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said Wednesday that current efforts to produce a set of official global standards on ESG issues were vital to “align capitalism with what society wants from it.”
BNN Bloomberg: Private equity firms shouldn’t ignore companies with poor environmental, social and governance records when seeking sustainable investments, a panel of dealmakers told the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Investment Week: A report released from ShareAction has accused large asset managers of “blocking progress” on ESG issues and reveals how they voted on shareholder resolutions in 2022.
BNN Bloomberg: BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said the narrative around ESG investing has become ugly and is creating “huge polarization.”
Funds Europe: ESG strategies dominated the ETF market in Europe in 2022, according to the latest data by Morningstar.
European Pensions: The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has called for the European Supervisory Authorities’ (ESAs) work on greenwashing to differentiate between misleading with intent and uncertainty on regulations.
Funds Europe: Regulators must not apply the term "greenwashing" too broadly in their efforts to identify offenders, a leading funds trade body said, due to unclear definitions surrounding sustainability at the regulatory level.
Yahoo News: Venture-capital and private-equity funds searching for the next big climate solution raised piles of cash last year, and now it's time to spend it.
Business Times: PROCEEDS from South-east Asian environmental, social and governance (ESG) bonds rose 37.4 per cent year-on-year to US$2.9 billion in the last three months of 2022, bucking a global decline, according to data from Refinitiv.
Funds Europe: The European Central Bank (ECB) is to green its stock of corporate and public sector bond holdings as part of a broader effort to meet Paris objective targets.
Yahoo Finance: Sustainable funding held up in Asia during a rough patch globally last year thanks to strong local demand, and bankers say a pipeline of de-carbonisation projects is likely to keep deals flowing in 2023.
BNN Bloomberg: Asia’s major banks are seeing a widening gap between ESG leaders and laggards, as regulators in the region ramp up scrutiny of sustainable finance, according to WWF-Singapore.
CNBC: ESG has become one of the most polarizing topics for companies and across Wall Street. But billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones says that a lot of the pushback simply comes down to how it is framed by critics.
BNN Bloomberg: Big global banks are eying some of the world’s most fragile countries for a new experiment in financial engineering: debt relief in exchange for environmental protections.
IR Magazine: The majority of large Canadian companies link ESG metrics to executive pay, although most lump ESG issues in with other areas rather than considering them on a stand-alone basis, according to new research from Canadian law firm Fasken.
BNN Bloomberg: The asset management unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has drawn in over $1.6 billion in client cash for a fund registered under the European Union’s toughest ESG rules.
Forbes: On the surface, what could go wrong with socially conscious investing? The so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing craze, which aims to direct capital to companies with the best environmental, social and governance principles, has grown from a 2004 study sponsored by the United Nations to a movement representing $35 trillion in assets under management.
Impact Alpha: ESG – for enterprise operations and investment decision-making that account for environmental, social and governance considerations – took a beating from all sides last year. As ImpactAlpha’s David Bank wrote in our 2023 lookahead, ESG was seen as either “a barely disguised conspiracy to undermine capitalism or toothless box-ticking designed to pump up wealth-management fees.”
Private Equity Wire: ESG continues to sit at the top of the agenda for private market investors and managers. The challenge of putting this data into context is becoming critical for industry participants in order to understand how they compare to their peers and to meet emerging investor and regulator expectations. Linking these metrics to financial performance is also crucial to optimize growth.
Mondaq: As the University Pension Plan increases its focus on climate change, its responsible investment policy considers environmental, social and governance factors as essential to sound long-term investing.
Cerulli: Despite being challenged by weak investor sentiment in 2022, ESG investing is expected to remain as a long-term trend in the Asia Pacific, and asset managers will continue to work together with distributors to promote these products.
Funds Europe: Less than 1% of sustainable funds meet the minimum expectations set out by the EU’s proposed voluntary Ecolabel, analysis by the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) has warned.
Corporate Knights: The year started optimistically, fresh off the bold and ambitious agreement in November 2021 that established the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). GFANZ assembled some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions to fight global warming by pledging to bring loan and investment portfolios worth US$130 trillion to net-zero by 2050.
RIABiz: Vanguard Group's cold calculus to join an ESG group with BlackRock and State Street is now a hot mess after it flip-flopped, threw active management under the bus and perhaps jeopardized its relationships with “blue” states to appease “red” ones.
ESG News: Taiwan’s central bank said it would begin incorporating climate change risks into its modelling and forecasts for inflation and economic growth and adapt monetary policy to promote sustainable development.
BNN Bloomberg: More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general have blasted ESG financial practices, while Republicans in Congress plan to increase their scrutiny of what they call “woke capitalism.”
The Globe and Mail: The surge in investor enthusiasm for mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that aim to drive higher returns by focusing on sustainability criteria has taken a nosedive from the dizzying heights of 2021, with net inflows to ESG funds falling to their lowest levels in nearly three years.
Forbes: Over the past year I’ve certainly had some fun banging on about those in the GOP who are ranting about ESG. Their flawed reasoning and fiery rhetoric made this an easy thing to do.
BNN Bloomberg: The asset management arm of BNP Paribas SA said using a different interpretation of “sustainable investment” than some of its peers has allowed it to keep the European Union’s top ESG tag attached to about $20 billion worth of funds.
ETF Trends: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing remained in focus in 2022, and one reason for the extension of the trend is that this style of market participation is, increasingly, a point of emphasis for regulators.
Reuters: A movement by financial firms and activists to challenge companies over their efforts on climate change and social inequality faced organised and growing push-back in 2022, led by Republican U.S. politicians.
Forbes: Why have Republicans declared war on ESG? ESG, which stands for “Environmental, Social, and Governance,” is a set of standards that companies employ to pursue socially responsible, especially pro-climate, policies. Notably, many state-level Republicans take climate change seriously; their governments advocate for renewable energy and invest in climate adaptation.
Yahoo Finance: Crypto is squarely in the cross hairs of Washington regulators, with fresh calls for stricter controls before the industry can get big enough to affect the broader financial system.
