Responsible Investor

RI Global news round-up 04/11/07

RI’s bite-sized summary of the week’s major RI stories.

French institutional investors are increasingly investing in SRI strategies with 61% of those surveyed saying they did so this year compared with 48% in 2006, according to a report by Novethic, Amadeis and BNP Paribas Asset Management.
Almost half of those investors who had no SRI exposure said they planned to do so in the coming years. 31% of the total institutions surveyed said they had invested more than 5% of their total assets in SRI strategies. The survey questioned 50 French institutional investors including pension and personal protection insurance providers, direct writing mutual societies and insurance companies, foundations and associations, with total assets of more than €700bn. Environmental issues were revealed as the most important concern for French investors. However, the report said that French investors had not kept pace with their counterparts in Europe and the US on questions of shareholder engagement. Only 16% of those with SRI assets thought it was also important to promote shareholder activism.
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), the clothing retailer, is under pressure from a Danish pension fund to explain allegations that its clothes contain cotton picked using child labour. The $6bn (€4bn) Pædagogernes Pensionskasse (PBU), for Danish education staff, has written to H&M demanding it outline its policy on supply chain and child labour issues. It follows a Swedish television report alleging that clothes sold by H&M contained cotton picked by children in Uzbekistan.


The fund said: “PBU has learned through the media that suppliers to Hennes & Mauritz are connected with the use of child labour,” PBU said any use of child labour was in conflict with the UN Global Compact principles on human rights, the environment and corruption, to which it is a signatory. Seperately, a report in Denmark issued by the Pension Market Council, which examines pension investment issues, says schemes can legally take an ethical stance on investments as long as returns do not fall below the market rate for other pension funds, reports IPE.com. The report also said it expected more Danish funds to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into their investments. Data from pensions industry association Forsikring & Pension said 32 Danish funds considered that ESG considerations were already important to them.
The UK National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has given a major boost to responsible investment by endorsing the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment for its members. The NAPF represents over 1300 pension funds running assets of more than £800bn. In its boldest statement on responsible investment to date, the NAPF said it recognised: “the importance of incorporating ESG considerations into investment decisions.” It said that by applying the UN principles its members could work towards improved long-term financial performance, closer alignment between their own objectives as institutional investors and those of society at large and better management of

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