Responsible Investor

RI global round-up Feb 14, 2008

RI’s bite-sized round-up of the week’s most important responsible investment stories.

The €34.5bn French pensions reserve fund (FRR) this week started an internal review of its responsible investment strategy on climate change issues and is expected to announce the findings by the middle of April. In December, Responsible Investor revealed the fund was reviewing managers for mooted clean tech mandates, although details have yet to be made public.
A spokeswoman for the FRR declined to comment. The fund also announced its investment return for 2007 of 4.8% or €1.6bn, six per cent down on its 11.1% return for 2006.
Jean-Louis Nakamura, chief executive officer (CEO) of the €8.4bn French public service supplementary pension scheme, ERAFP, is leaving after less than six months. The fund is one of Europe’s most notable responsible investors and runs all its assets according to SRI principles since it became a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2005. In March 2006, ERAFP adopted an 
SRI Charter, similar to that of the €34bn French Reserve Fund, built around five values: respect for the rule of law and human rights, social advances, labour participation, the environment and proper governance and transparency. It also mandated BNP Paribas AM, Integral Development AM, Robeco Institutional AM for SRI equity mandates worth between €100m and €400m. Pictet AM was put on standby for a similar mandate. It is understood that Nakamura, who was previously chief investment officer at FRR until joining ERAF in August, 2007, is joining Lombard Odier

Darier Hentsch. Investors look set to lock horns once again with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) after it ruled that companies including Bear Sterns, JPMorgan Chase and E*Trade Financial could block shareholders from voting on proxy-access proposals including the shareholder nomination of company directors, without breaching federal regulations. Richard Ferlauto, director of pension and benefit policy at the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, one of the largest unions in the US which co-filed four of the access resolutions, said it would shortly announce whether it would follow up on threats of legal action against the SEC. Last year, some of Europe’s largest pension funds threw their support behind a campaign by US investors to quash the SEC’s proxy access proposals, which they said could undermine their right to representation on the board of companies they invest in. However, in a debate that became increasingly split along Republican versus Democrat political lines, the SEC pushed through the proxy-access veto. Read proxy season feature
Cheryl Smith, executive vice president and senior portfolio manager at Trillium Asset Management, has been named the new chair of the board of the US Social Investment Forum. Smith replaces outgoing SIF chair, Tim Smith senior vice president of Walden Asset Management who served from 2002-2007.
More than 400 of the world’s biggest institutional investors will meet in New York on February 14 to

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