Soil is a crucial ingredient, not only in the production of healthy and delicious food, but also medicine, building materials, our clothes and fuel. Soil health is also at the front line of tackling climate change, through the carbon sequestration processes that soil enables. However, despite the central role farming has, accounting for a third … Read more
First Sentier Investors has announced Kate Turner as its global head of responsible investment, as Will Oulton is set to retire at the end of the year. Based in Sydney, Turner has worked within the investment and responsible investment team over the past three years supporting integration of ESG considerations into processes and engaging clients … Read more
Brown Advisory has recruited two fixed income analysts from BNP Paribas and Global Evolution to join its global sustainable fixed income team. Yacine El-Mohri was most recently a financials credit trading desk analyst at BNP Paribas, while Eriko Miyazaki-Ross (pictured) was an emerging markets corporate credit portfolio manager and branch manager in the UK at … Read more
The price of natural gas in Europe has risen tenfold since the end of 2020. Supply has been curtailed by Russia just at a point when demand was rising as European economies bounced back from levels depressed through the Covid pandemic. This price shock has shown just how sensitive and dependent our economies are on … Read more
BlackRock and UBS are among major financial firms taking steps to be removed from a list of companies that Texas has classified as “boycotting” the fossil fuel industry. Representatives from at least five companies have asked the office of state Comptroller Glenn Hegar to remove them from the divestment list he published in August, arguing that they … Read more
COP27 has now officially closed, having overrun by 2 days in order to clinch an unprecedented deal on loss and damage. While the negotiators will have earned their break after the marathon negotiations in Sharm El-Sheikh, for the EU’s climate and environment negotiators, they are now entering a critical 12 months for finalising the EU’s … Read more
When it comes to impact investment, a huge chunk of global AUM has largely been missing from the picture: the $100trn in publicly listed equities. Worldwide impact investing surpassed $1trn in AUM for the first time in 2022, according to the latest Global Impact Investing Network report. While this represents a ‘significant psychological milestone’ for … Read more
There is precious little sign of an ESG backlash among UK investors. That is the conclusion from the Association of Investment Company (AIC)’s research among 400 private investors and 200 financial advisers and wealth managers. The conditions were conducive to a counter-revolution. In the US, “anti-woke” critics of ESG are becoming increasingly vocal, and are … Read more
Invesco has written to shareholders of its ETF range to update on changes to its ESG methodology in some of its products. The group has said it is “upgrading” its investment policy by embedding ESG characteristics on corporate bond and emerging market ETFs and has explicitly mentioned the ESG risk/return profile of securities must be … Read more
The high-level promises of COP26 have been broken. $100bn (£84.38bn) of capital has not been mobilised, and only around 30 new or updated nationally determined contributions have been provided. Unsurprisingly, there was a sense of “scepticism and pessimism” coming into COP27 about the outcomes that would be achieved, Andrew Griffiths, director of community and partnerships … Read more