Responsible Investor

RI global news round up

The RI news you may have missed this week.

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), a group of 37 pension funds and asset managers with collective assets of over €3.5 trillion, has devised a set of reporting guidelines to assist electricity companies in their reporting on climate change risks and opportunities. The Disclosure Framework for Electricity Utilities is the result of collaboration between the IIGCC and sell-side analysts from CA Cheuvreux. The IIGCC said that under current disclosure requirements it is difficult for investors to “understand the manner in which the different companies have structured their business strategies and capital expenditure plans”. The work draws upon an earlier report by Insight Investment, The Climate Change Disclosures of European Utilities.

An initiative to boost the number of charities investing ethically in the UK – http://www.charitysri.org – has been launched by the EIRIS Foundation and the UK Social Investment Forum. The free online resource aims to address the disparity between those charities who express an interest in investing their money ethically and those actually doing it and provides clear, accessible and comprehensive information on why and how to invest ethically.

The six working groups of France’s “Grenelle de l’environnement”, the environmental action plan initiated by President Nicolas Sarkoxy, have reported their findings back to the government. The six groups included association representatives, politicians, scientists, state bodies and trades unions. The findings

have not been made public. A public consultation on the issue takes place during October. Sarkozy is then expected to announce a government environment programme for the duration of his presidency. Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet, secretary of state for ecology, said the goal of the Grenelle – named after a set of agreements made in 1968 – would be “to find the means for a generation to collectively take its responsibilities.”

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which runs the €223bn Norwegian Government Pension Scheme, has appointed Anne Kvam as head of corporate governance. Kvam joins NBIM on January 1 from her current post as legal director at Norske Skog, the Norwegian paper group. She succeeds Henrik Syse, head of corporate governance at NBIM since the post was created in 2005, who is leaving the bank at the end of the year. The bank is also expected to recruit three more staff members for the governance department, according to IPE.com. Separately, Knut Kjaer, chief executive at NBIM, has also announced that he is leaving the fund.
France’s AGF Asset management is to use the Country Sustainability Ratings of EIRIS, the London-based SRI research house to integrate environmental, social and governance issues into its fixed income products. AGF currently manages three Socially Responsible Investment equity funds and will use EIRIS’ research on sovereign bonds to convert one of its fixed income funds to SRI.
International Carbon Investors and Services (ICIS), a recently created group representing

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