Responsible Investor

both have stakes, has launched a $600m carbon fund with Dubai-based investment company Istithmar World Ventures to finance Asian emissions reduction projects.
Istithmar has pledged $150m to the fund and SCC is seeking further investors for a first close in the first quarter of 2008.
SCC invests in long-term emissions reductions programmes, generating credits which are sold in the market.
Sustainability policies in large cap companies differ widely across and within business sectors and across countries, according to an in-depth study conducted by Washington DC-based financial research group RiskMetrics. The year-long study examined more than 200 policy and performance indicators regarding issues such as climate change, ethics, human rights, labour and the environment for over 1,700 leading global firms. The results indicated that companies in Europe, Australasia and the Far East (EAFE) performed better than US-based S&P firms on climate change and environment, whilst US companies scored higher on ethical governance standards. Toronto Stock Exchange companies were leaders on labour and human rights issues.
77% of Swiss companies consider that climate change involves business risk for them, according to the first report of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) on the country. Under the patronage of Ethos and Pictet Asset Management, the group of Swiss companies reporting

to the CDP was expanded for the first time to the 50 largest Swiss listed companies. 69% of Swiss companies said they had put in place a climate change strategy as a result, while 46% have set greenhouse gas reduction targets. The survey was carried out by Centre Info, the Swiss SRI research house.
The UK National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has said it could lead its members in a court case to abolish value-added tax (VAT) paid for asset management services and recoup hundreds of millions of pounds. The NAPF said a European Court of Justice judgement on the JPMorgan Claverhouse case in June 2007 meant that VAT exemption should extend to services provided by investment managers to occupational pension schemes. It is recommending that pension funds jointly finance a legal challenge to the UK revenue and customs department. NAPF Chief Executive, Joanne Segars, said: “Litigation is never without risk and it would be expensive for any one pension fund to finance a legal challenge on its own. But if a number of funds agree to share the costs, they could get their money back several times over. If we get enough interest from our members, we will co-ordinate a case.”
Following legal advice, the NAPF said it believed that occupational pension funds qualified for treatment as Special Investment Funds and that current UK VAT law violates the principle of fiscal neutrality which underpins the EU VAT Directive.

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