Responsible Investor

RI round-up May 28

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

The European Social Investment Forum (Eurosif) has launched an approval logo with which SRI fund managers can label their funds once they have been reassessed against European SRI Transparency Guidelines. The guidelines were created in November 2004 to increase accountability for consumers by requiring fund managers to explain the SRI policies and practices related to the fund. National Social Investment Forums in European countries will oversee the guideline assessments. Eurosif has also published its latest sector report covering environmental, social and governance (ESG) challenges for companies in the nuclear energy sector. The reports aim to help policy makers, mainstream and specialist SRI investors, pension fund trustees, and companies understand risks that are not consistently integrated into traditional financial analysis, but which have the potential to influence companies’ shareholder value and fund managers’ investment decisions. In it Eurosif highlights six key challenges for the nuclear sector: climate change, safety, spent fuel waste management, plant decommissioning, social acceptance and educating new talent.
Seperately, Eurosif is to conduct the first-ever study on European high net worth individual (HNWI) investments incorporating sustainability issues. This study is being sponsored by Bank Sarasin in Switzerland. Surveys have been sent out to a number of wealth managers as well as family offices. If you would like to be part of the study, please contact Marion de Marcillac marion@eurosif.org

UBS, the Swiss banking group, is reportedly planning to launch its range of socially responsible investment funds into North America.
Speaking at a recent conference in Canada, Vijaya Govindan, UBS Global Portfolio Management strategist, said the fund manager was currently in ‘educational’ mode about its products with US and Canadian investors. UBS is understood to manage about $4bn in SRI related assets.
SpainSIF, the social investment forum for the Spanish market, has been fully incorporated. Member groups include Spanish banks: BBVA, BBK and Caser Seguos as well as foreign groups with local market presence including Crédit Agricole and FTSE.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), has reportedly said it plans to launch the first exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on the recently launched Madrid-based FTSE4Good IBEX index. The bank told Environmental Finance magazine that the fund will be aimed at investors interested in socially responsible funds, but targeted particularly at institutional investors such as pension funds. Eugenio Yurrita, head of asset management at BBVA told the magazine: “BBVA has been in the forefront of corporate social responsibility for years and enjoys building solutions for our clients regarding socially responsible investing.”
Ethos, the Geneva-based foundation which looks after CHF2.3bn (€1.4bn) in assets run on a socially responsible basis on behalf of Swiss pension funds is

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