Widening The Sustainability Lens
Ask a dozen institutional investors how they approach ‘sustainable investing’ and you’ll likely get a dozen different answers. What will be consistent, however, is their understanding that successful investing in today’s world requires at least a consideration of environmental, social and governance factors.
Sustainable investing incorporates ESG factors to generate long-term competitive returns and deliver positive environmental or social impact. The approach can range from selecting or excluding companies based on a variety of ESG criteria all the way to an impact strategy, which invests in companies to achieve specific sustainable outcomes.
The scope of sustainable investing has moved significantly beyond the equity markets. Investment managers across many other asset classes are adopting ESG factors to build the strategies and products that asset owners are increasingly demanding.
`
Sustainability in Institutional Investing
As sustainable investing continues to surge among institutional investors, considerations of environmental, social and governance factors in selecting investments have expanded beyond equities to other asset classes. The spectrum of ESG integration approaches has also widened significantly to include impact investing and thematic investing, which aim to achieve target returns along with specific environmental or social outcomes. This webinar will bring you up to speed on some of the latest strategies in sustainable investing across different assets and will help demystify how asset managers select and monitor companies and funds across ESG metrics.
Featuring
Megan Reilly Cayten
Sr. Investment Manager
HSBC Pollination Climate Asset Management
Mahesh Jayakumar
Research Analyst – Fixed Income
MFS Investment Management
Mary-Therese Barton
Head of Emerging Market Debt
Pictet Asset Management
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
2:00 p.m. ET
AN ENHANCED FIXED-INCOME FOCUS
While there are myriad studies showing the value of sustainable or ESG investing for equity investors, there has been far less research on the fixed-income side until recently, said Mahesh Jayakumar, CFA, FRM, fixed income research analyst at MFS Investment Management. The firm’s fixed-income team has long been committed to ESG integration not only due to the materiality of ESG risk factors, but also opportunities on investment returns.
“We are an active manager with the goal of generating returns through various phases of the business cycle,” Jayakumar said. “Our goal is to provide a [competitive] return to our clients, and to do that, we need to think about both ESG risks and opportunities in our investment thesis. For us, ESG is not about excluding certain industries or sectors, but an integrated part of our mainstream investment process.”
ESG factors must be a focus for any institutional …….