Responsible Investor

42.13% in favour of an annual non-binding shareholder vote on executive pay, according to the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, which works with pension funds and other institutional investors on corporate governance and social responsibility issues.
US public pension fund trustees are walking out of board votes rather than risk being charged with conflicts of interest under a court ruling adopted in California, reports Pensions & Investments. The ruling by the California Court of Appeal in the case of Lexin vs. Superior Court, found that trustees can be criminally liable if they approve a contract that tangentially provides them a personal benefit.
The US House of Representatives has voted to extend a package of green energy tax credits. Under the legislation, which still has to pass through theSenate, $18bn of tax breaks for big oil companies would be scrapped to help pay to broaden an exisiting tax credit scheme for wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel projects. A coalition of 120 investor groups, corporations and NGOs is urging Congress to pass the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008.
Lord Stern, the economist behind the UK Treasury’s influential Stern Review, is to lead The Centre for Climate Change Economics, a joint venture by The London School of Economics and the University of Leeds. The research centre is backed by a £5m grant from the Economic and Research Council. Venture capitalists invested a record $3bn (£1.5bn) in clean technology deals last year, according to data from Dow Jones Venture Source. The investment was spread across 221 deals and marked an increase of 43 per cent on the $2.1bn invested in 173 clean tech deals in 2006.

The Investment Property Databank (IPD) has launched a global initiative to help real estate owners measure and understand the environmental impact of the buildings they own, saying such data will become a component of future real estate pricing and legislation, reports IPE Real Estate.
The initiative was launched by IPD, Barclays, Bureau Veritas and CB Richard Ellis, with the support of 20 major corporations and the UK’s Confederation of Business and Industry (CBI), in the hope all companies will eventually publish their findings within corporate reports. The downloadable IPD environment code is designed to measure the carbon emissions of any type of building through the collection of ‘core measures’ – looking at energy, water and waste usage – along with ‘qualitative measures’, and then track and assess a building’s environmental status and make changes to improve that status if it is considered appropriate.
The Green Building Council of Australia has released a report, Valuing Green, which considers how green buildings affect property values and recommends valuation methods. The report is freely available for download only until Friday 7 March and will then only be available to GBCA members. Download report
Labour members of the UK Parliament are pushing for legislation to give extra protection to staff whose employer is taken over by a private-equity buyer. The bill would extend TUPE regulations, under which the buyers of a company must retain existing staff under the same terms and conditions, to private equity buyouts. At present, TUPE rules do not cover situations where the shares, rather than the company itself, change hands
Impax Asset Management is reportedly planning to launch a new open-ended investment company (OEIC)

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