Green funds continue 2011 sales surge

Green themed and norms-based European RI retail funds continued to sell strongly during February with total sector receipts of €764.7m, contributing to a strong recovery in recent months, according to the latest available figures compiled for Responsible Investor by Lipper FMI, the investment data group.
It adds to the €1.48bn in assets taken during January and €841.3m in December, 2010. The fund class, labelled by Lipper FMI as ‘RI Extended’, includes those with multiple ethical exclusions, those following a norms-based strategy, and themed climate change and microfinance funds. Norwegian financial services group, Storebrand, continued to dominate sales for the third month running with large inflows into its range of bond funds. The firm’s Global Kreditt IG fund led the sector with sales of €511.8m and its Global Stat fund of bonds and global currencies, was third best seller with sales of €138.4m. The month also showed a strong pick up in sentiment for equities funds. SAM’s Sustainable European Equities Fund was second best riser for the month with inflows of €195m.The biggest RI Extended fund is Pictet’s Water fund with €2.4bn in assets. Second is Blackrock’s New Energy Fund with assets of €1.96bn.
SRI funds more broadly also recorded a return to positive sales in February with inflows of €751.7m for the month. ‘RI screened’ funds, as they are labelled by Lipper FMI, have undergone an ‘extra-financial’ ESG (environment, social and governance) screen in their stock selection process, The sector was hit by total losses of €742m in January, compared with inflows of €623.8m in December, 2010. Money market funds continued to dominate the top selling funds in February. The best seller was French fund manager Natixis’ Fonsicav which took in €274.7m. Second was French manager Amundi’s Tréso ISR fund with sales of €222.1m. Third was Allianz’s Securicash fund with assets €74.6m. The biggest RI Screened fund is Amundi’s Tréso ISR fund with €7.3bn. Second is Natixis’ Fonsicav with €6.7bn. Total equity fund sales in Europe for mainstream funds were €4.6bn for the month.
See downloads (left hand column) for top sales table