New York State $110bn fund makes $200m green allocation, hires FTSE and HSBC to index

The $110bn (€77bn) New York State Common Retirement Fund is licensing the FTSE Environmental Technology 50 Index and HSBC Global Climate Change Index as benchmarks for a new $200m slug of in-house managed clean tech and climate change solution investments. The allocation is part of a $500m Green Strategic Investment Program (GSIP) programme in environmentally focused strategies announced last year by Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State Comptroller. In April this year, the fund hired Generation Investment Management, the renewables manager, to run $200m in assets. That leaves $100m of GSIP still to be allocated. The New York fund runs pension assets for more than a million state and local government employees. In the latest move, internal portfolio managers will makeinvestments in companies included in the FTSE and HSBC indexes. DiNapoli said: “FTSE and HSBC will help the fund take its indexed equity investments into a promising market sector. This move should help deliver strong risk-adjusted returns while providing capital to environmentally sustainable companies that are providing solutions to climate change.” The FTSE index tracks 50 of the largest pure-play environmental technology companies globally, which it defines as those who derive at least 50% of their core business from the development and deployment of environmental technologies. The HSBC Global Climate Change Benchmark Index tracks 377 of the largest and most liquid companies it assesses are best placed to profit from the opportunities presented by a changing climate.