Aegon Asset Management has appointed Anne Scott (pictured) to the newly created role of global climate solutions lead. She joins the firm’s global fixed income team with a focus on supporting its efforts in climate solutions. With 25 years in industry, Scott arrived at Aegon in 2005 to lead its middle office delivery teams. She … Read more
HANetf has launched an energy transition ETF on the London Stock Exchange. The Sprott Energy Transition Materials Ucits ETF tracks the Nasdaq Sprott Energy Transition Materials Ex-Uranium Index and provides materials exposure in clean energy generation (rare earths and silver), transmission (copper) and storage (lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt and graphite). Since March 2022, global government … Read more
The maxim “let the buyer beware” is the idea that a purchasing party alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods or services before a purchase is made. But when you buy something that doesn’t work or develops a fault, it’s rare to shrug your shoulders, put it away and forget about … Read more
Considering the social impacts of investing in businesses is rising up the agenda again but is more personal, less standardised and can mean short-term profit dips for long-term gains, according to commentators. In the latest episode of the ESG Out Loud podcast, ESG Clarity global editor Natasha Turner is joined by Dan Kemp, CIO for EMEA … Read more
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has said it is not the role of asset managers to “engineer a particular outcome in the economy” amid the increasing politicization of ESG investing in the US. In his annual letter to investors published yesterday, Fink said: “As minority shareholders, it’s not our place to be telling companies what to … Read more
ESG Clarity is exploring the decarbonization targets set by Net Zero Asset Managers’ initiative (NZAM) firms as well as talking to individual fund groups about how they are finding the journey to net zero. See also: – ESG Clarity’s Net Zero Database Here, Shanbor Gupta, principal at Clean Energy Ventures, which invests in scalable early-stage climate tech startups and clean energy technologies addressing … Read more
A coalition of 21 state attorney generals are calling on the Senate and House of Representatives to overturn the block on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) ESG rule, calling it “the latest in a years-long campaign to obscure these facts” about climate change. In a letter sent to Congress, attorneys general asserted that the DOL … Read more
The UK government has launched a new nuclear programme aimed at generating a quarter of the country’s electricity by 2050, and has reclassified nuclear energy as environmentally sustainable. Today (15 March) chancellor Jeremy Hunt used his Spring Budget to reveal the UK would class nuclear energy as environmentally sustainable in its green taxonomy, to give … Read more
The Spring Budget was missing “serious consideration” of how Britain plans to make its mark in the global clean energy ‘arms race’, the chief executive of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF) has said. See also: Spring Budget 2023: Nuclear to be classed as sustainable in UK Taxonomy James Alexander, CEO at UKSIF, … Read more
A company’s ESG conduct has no direct relationship whatsoever to its credit rating, according to a study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Hazel Ilango, a Singapore-based energy finance analyst for debt markets at the IEEFA, carried out an analysis of more than 700 companies who received credit ratings from the … Read more