ESG Round-Up: S&P plots withdrawal from Russian ratings

Earlier this week, S&P Global Ratings announced it will withdraw ratings for any outstanding Russian entities. The credit rating agency has set itself a deadline of April 15th in order to be in compliance with a ban imposed by the European Union. 

The United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) has released its first report disclosing its Office of Investment Management’s internal processes, commitments, and actions for evaluating and acting on climate change.  

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has produced a report on the long-term short selling bans of 2020 by six European authorities. Amongst the findings, ESMA concluded: “the bans did not entail substantial displacement effects from non-banning to banning jurisdictions.” 

The UK’s £36 billion Pension Protection Fund is making its investment decisions contingent on the ESG performance data it receives from fund managers, the PPF’s head of ESG, Claire Curtin, told delegates at affiliate publication Infrastructure Investor’s Global Summit. “We have had to increase the hurdle a bit more now and say we won’t deploy any more money if we’ve got an existing manager and they’re really lagging compared to where the rest of our managers are moving to,” she said. 

The president of the Capital Market Authority of the Sultanate of Oman has said that in the future there will be compulsory reporting – and possibly compulsory auditing – for listed companies on what they are doing regarding ESG, according to the Oman Observer.