Everything’s Future

Invest today. Change tomorrow.

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Our goal

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations underpin all our investment activities. Our goal is to make a difference – for our clients, society and the wider world. ESG investment is about doing the right thing, while aiming to achieve our clients’ long-term financial goals.

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Active engagement

ESG investment is about active engagement, with the goal of improving the performance of assets we manage around the world. To do this, we have a team of over 50 ESG specialists spanning the globe. This on-the-ground resource means we can fully understand the investments we make for our clients, building detailed pictures of companies that we invest in and the markets in which we operate.

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Our commitment

It starts with us, that’s why on top of our financial responsibilities to our clients, as a company we have committed to:

eliminate all feasible single-use plastics in our buildings
100% renewable energy in our buildings
cut our greenhouse gas emissions from energy use by 50% by 2030

We want to go further though, and while we continue to reduce, we have also pledged to offset our entire carbon footprint to become carbon neutral in 2020.

Part of our DNA since 1992

Corporate Governance team established

1992

First ethical fund launched

1994

Joined UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association

1997

Established Socially Responsible Investment team

2001

Founder member of Eurosif

2001

Became member of Asian Corporate Governance Association

2002

Published first Real Estate SRI Policy

2003

Founder member of UK Corporate Governance Forum

2004

Became member of Carbon Disclosure Project

2004

Dedicated ESG resource in real estate

2007

Became signatory of UN Principles for Responsible Investment

2007

Founder member of International Sustainability Alliance

2011

Euro Corporate Bond SRI fund launched.

2012

Enhanced voting disclosure developed

2012

Became members of Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark

2013

Published first Governance & Stewardship Annual Report.

2014

Established ESG Investment Quarterly Report

2014

Extel Award No1 leading asset manager for SRI/ESG

2015

ESG on-desk analysts established on equity teams

2015

Founder member Investment Advisory Group of Sustainability Accounting Standards Board

2016

First impact fund launched

2017

Dedicated ESG resource fixed income

2017

Awarded First General Research Ethics Board 5-star rating

2018

Establishment of cross-asset class ESG Investment Forum

2019

Key documents - climate change

Climate change - our approach for investments

Investing in a changing climate

Strategic Asset Allocation: ESG’s new frontier

ESG Quarterly Report

Our informative quarterly report provides a summary of our research, company engagement and voting activities. Highlights include:

We are strong advocates of active stewardship. Equity specialist Fiona Manning brings the topic to life with her own experiences investing in emerging markets.
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing the world today. It is also a key factor in relation to our investment strategy. We summarise our recently published paper.
Green bonds – we take a closer look at why we think it’s important that perfection does not become the enemy of good for this growing source of funding.
From Asia, we delve deeper into the continued growth of royalty fees in India.
Finally, we have an overview of the companies we have engaged with this quarter.

Latest report PDF download

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Voting summary Q2 2019	Total
Number of resolutions voted	38,113
Percentage of abstentions	2.6%
Percentage of meetings with at least one vote against or abstention	58.9%
Percentage of resolutions voted against management recommendations	11.7%
Percentage of resolutions voted with management recommendations	85.6%
Shareholder meetings at which our clients’ shares were voted	3,072