Responsible Investor

Nordea's Sasja Beslik visited the Jakobshavn Glacier to get a closer look at the fastest melting glacier in the world.

How are the big US endowment funds assessing divest/invest campaigns and thinking about ESG integration?

• Verifying corporate emissions data and using it for investments: why and how?
• Carbon footprinting and reporting: to what end? Is it good enough?
• Low carbon investment strategies and approaches

The Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, the G20, and the future of corporate and investor financial accounting./p>

Four x 10 minute presentations: quick fire Q&A
• Themes: Food security/safety. Private equity (agriculture, farming). Water/drought. Technology/sustainability.
• New products: indices, passive, ETFs, smart beta, sustainable real estate, green infra

• What's driving the change?
• Investor differentiation and investee expectations.
• Rebuilding trust in financial markets, encouraging retirement saving.
• Reporting across asset classes: equities/bonds/property/alternatives: differences and similarities.

Two debating teams lay out their arguments over the future of ESG ratings and reporting

How are major foundations really starting to align their investment strategies?

• How can we nurture greater alignment between our personal values, our organisations and the financial system as a whole?
• How can leaders in the investment industry set the tone and create a culture that supports people to be true to their values?

• What does effective ESG integration look like?
• How are institutional investors approaching this? What are the challenges?
• What's the real take up of RI/ESG in institutional investment in the Americas, and how could the Department of Labor ERISA guidance change the game?

How can investors and companies move away from short-term, value-destroying behaviour to long-term value creation?

• What regulatory/policy action has been taken since COP21 and what should investors know? Developments at the G20.
• How can investors align investment portfolios across asset classes to stay below the 2°C target, and why should they?
• Reviewing green investment opportunities again

• What was new at COP22?
• How is the New York State Common Retirement Fund's low carbon index fund with Goldman Sachs developing?
• What might the US election result mean for the future of sustainable investment and green finance in the US?

Welcome address to the RI Americas 2016 conference held on 6-7 December in New York City, by Lenora Suki, Head of Sustainable Finance Product Strategy, Bloomberg

Philippe Desfossés discusses ERAFP's pioneering adoption of SRI policies and the unique opportunities presented by climate change.

Greg Hazevlat of Pax World on disclosure, transparency and the rising interest in ESG integration from Pax's customers.

Christian values underpin the rigour of the investment process at the Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church.

ACSI's CEO says integrating ESG into the investment process requires cultural change and leadership from the top.

Jane Ambachtsheer outlines the work of the Financial Stability Board's Taskforce for Climate Related Financial Disclosures.

Rob Lake argues that the integration of ESG into investment processes is about change management.

Family offices are demanding sustainable investment that matches their values as well as their investment needs.

For Allianz, dialogue with external stakeholders has been a very important part of our ESG efforts.

Oekom believes that demand for high quality and deeper ESG data is increasing.

Paul Woolley says benchmarking creates an Alice in Wonderland effect, inverting investment risks and returns for high and low risk assets.

For pension funds like ABP, it's not just about funding levels; they are also really concerned about the planet.

Sustainalytics is working more with mainstream investors who see ESG information as an additional signal - an addition to their investment toolkit.

Vibeka Mair, Senior Reporter at RI, talks to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the $184.5bn Common Retirement Fund about the fund's evolving approach to climate change as an investment theme including its recent $2bn commitment to a low carbon index with Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Vibeka Mair, Senior Reporter at RI, talks to Jens-Christian Stougaard, Director at PensionDanmark, the US$30bn Danish Labor Market Pension Fund, about topics including its significant commitments to renewables: 10% of its portfolio dedicated to direct investment in the sectors - a capacity of 2.4 gigawatts.

Vibeka Mair, Senior Reporter at RI, talks to Denis Duverne, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at AXA Group, one of the world's largest insurers, about environmental investment topics including its commitment to issue $3bn in green bonds.

Cherie Blair, CBE, QC, Chair, Omnia Strategy

John Hewson, Former Leader, Liberal Party of Australia, Chair, Asset Owners Disclosure Project

Howard Covington, Founder and Former Chief Executive Officer, New Star Asset Management Chairman, Isaac Newston Institute for Mathematical Sciences at University of Cambridge, Trustee, ClientEarth

Raj Thamotheram, Chief Executive, Preventable Surprises; Visiting Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University

Jeremy Coller, CIO, Coller Capital, Founder, FAIRR

Per Bolund, Swedish Minister for Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs

Michael Baldinger, CEO, RobecoSAM

Anne Simpson, Director of Global Governance, CalPERS

Michael Jantzi, Chief Executive Officer, Sustainalytics

Anna Ryott, Managing Director, Swedfund International

Pierin Menzli, Head Sustainable Investment Research, Bank J Safra Sarasin

Helena Charrier, Responsible Investment Project Director, Caisse des Dépôts

Alex van der Velden, Partner & CIO, Ownership Capital

Kirsty Jenkinson, Managing Director, Sustainable Investment Strategies, Wespath

Dawn Turner, Head of Pension Fund Management, Environment Agency Pension Fund

Martina Macpherson, COO, Refine Research

Mark Campanale, Founder and Director, Carbon Tracker Initiative

Clare Brook, CEO, Blue Marine Foundation

Sean Kidney, CEO, Climate Bonds Initiative

Sara Anzinger, Manager Real Estate Debt & Fixed Income, GRESB

Daniel Godfrey, Chief Executive Officer, Investment Association

Bob Litterman, Partner and Chairman of Risk Committee, Kepos Capital, is one of the world's most influential risk managers: when he speaks, it's worth listening. In a keynote at December 2014's RI Americas conference he talks emissions' pricing, stranded assets and potential value destruction in the energy sector.

The investment advisor, custodian and trustee of New York City's five pension funds managing $160 billion for the public pension system, Scott Stringer is fast becoming a leading advocate for corporate governance changes sought by long-term institutional investors.

Julia Kochetygova, Head of Sustainability Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices and Guido Giese, Head of indices at RobecoSAM share their insights on the importance of materiality for ESG investing.

Does ESG really matter? In this video, Julia Kochetygova, Head of Sustainability Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices and Guido Giese, Head of indices at RobecoSAM explain the importance of Impact Reporting within the ESG space.

In this video, Julia Kochetygova, Head of Sustainability Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices and Guido Giese, Head of indices at RobecoSAM discuss index investing and capital allocation to sustainable companies and projects.

Heather McArdle, Director of Fixed Income Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices and Julia Kochetygova, Head of Sustainability Indices at S&P Dow Jones Indices discuss what Green Bonds are and what makes them unique.

Focusing on resource efficiency solutions is about more than protecting scarce natural resources. It is also about tapping into potentially huge long-term growth opportunities. This video shows a glimpse of the many areas in which innovative businesses are helping the global economy adapt to resource scarcity - and investors generate long-term returns.

Highlights from The RobecoSAM Sustainability Forum 2014 (2-3 October, Horgen, Switzerland). The RobecoSAM Forum is a two day conference that connects corporates and asset owners with a group of outstanding speakers. This year's keynote speakers included Chandran Nair from the Global Institute For Tomorrow, Nick Robins from UNEP and Jamie Butterworth from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance at CalSTRS the $166bn US pension fund, talks to Hugh Wheelan at the RI Americas conference on December 11 about executive pay, board diversity, the fund's 2014 governance priorities, and collaboration with other international asset owners.

Zaiga Strautmane, Head of ESG at Unipension, the DKK89bn ($12bn) Danish pension administration group, says initiatives in Denmark on ESG factors in sovereign bonds have put it high on the fund's sustainability agenda along with newer areas of focus like real estate and private equity.

Daniel Willey, Compliance Officer, Investment Management Division, UN Joint Staff Pension Scheme, tells RI how company engagements and working with other investors in the UNPRI Clearinghouse is a key area of its ESG work.

Melanie Brooks, Senior Analyst for Responsible Investment at Folketrygdfondet, Government Pension fund of Norway, is a big fish investing heavily in the relatively small Norwegian market. Brooks explains how active ownership and collaboration with fellow Norwegian investors is therefore vital to its ESG approach.

Jon Duncan, Head of Sustainability Research and Engagement at Old Mutual, the $262.2bn financial services group, talks about how the company integrates issues like energy security, carbon taxation, water risk and executive pay into its investment decisions in South Africa.

Christina Kusoffsky Hillesöy, Head of Communication and Sustainable Investments, at AP3 in Sweden, explains how the government pension buffer fund is weighing up ESG integration into its passive equity exposure.

Adrian Bertrand, ESG Manager, at South Africa's ZAR1.2 trillion ($101bn) Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), the largest in Africa, talks about how the fund is looking at topical, domestic ESG concerns such as labour rights in the platinum mining sector in South Africa and initiatives on salaries and a living wage.

James Gifford, Executive Director of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment talks about the importance of being in Africa – investment opportunities and challenges - for this year's annual PRI signatory gathering.

Daniel Doctoroff, President and CEO of Bloomberg LP discusses the company's commitment to sustainability and belief in the growing importance of ESG research.

What are the key requirements to leverage sustainable investment and establish governance frameworks from a research, policy and investment standpoint? Can ESG factors make a material difference to the risk / return profile of portfolios and how? And just how should investors go about managing fiduciary duties? MSCI ESG Research, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, RBF / University of St Andrews, UKSIF and Responsible Investor present edited excerpts from the ESG Leadership Forum held in London, 27 April 2012.

Thomas Kuh, Business Director of MSCI ESG Indices, takes a historical perspective on the interest in, and awareness of, investing in ESG-oriented companies over the past several decades. Prior to the 1990s there was a scarcity of information about companies and their ESG engagement, says Kuh; furthermore no one really had a framework for analyzing that information. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: MSCI ESG Indices, FSinsight.

George Serafeim, Assistant Professor of Business Management, Harvard Business School discusses the results of research presented in the white paper "The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance", which he co-authored with Professor Robert G. Eccles (Harvard Business School) and Prof. Ioannis Ioannou (London Business School). The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: Read the white paper, FSinsight.

Marcel Jeucken, Managing Director Responsible Investment, PGGM, discusses how the fund makes its investment decisions, integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns into its investment strategy. "We are big institutional investors that deploy capital into the economy, and we have to think about how we do that" he says. One crucial element the industry is currently missing: a way to prove the societal, as well as the financial return in socially responsible investments. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: Responsible Investment at PGGM, FSinsight.

Attorney Jay Youngdahl, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI) at Harvard University's Hauser Center, says that conservative lawyers retained by US pension funds are reinforcing the wrong definition of "fiduciary duty" with their clients, remaining focused on short-term profit for beneficiaries. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: Initiative for Responsible Investment, FSinsight.

On January 12, 2012, nearly 500 of the world's investors and most powerful financial players gathered at the United Nations to showcase their actions and discuss promising trends to catalyze the large-scale investment needed to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate potentially catastrophic climate impacts. The speakers featured in the video - supplied courtesy of Ceres - are: Mindy S. Lubber, President, Ceres and Director, INCR; Janet Cowell, North Carolina State Treasurer; Rob McCord, State Treasurer, Pennsylvania Treasury Department; Jack Ehnes, CEO, California State Teachers' Retirement System; Jane Ambachtsheer, National Partner, Mercer Consulting Services; Bill Green, Senior Managing Director, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets; Mark Vachon, VP, GE ecomagination; Richard L. Trumka, President and AFL-CIO.

More information: Ceres.

The Boards of organizations can do a lot more to promote ESG, says Erika Karp, Managing Director & Head of Global Sector Research for UBS Investment Bank. That involves asking sometimes uncomfortably explicit questions about the environmental, social and governance-related performance of the organization. "I don't think the business case for ESG has been articulated well, because if you take each of the pieces environmental, social and governance there's a business case to be made wherever you sit in the capital markets ecosystem," says Karp. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: UBS Investment Bank, FSinsight.

Rob Lake, Director of Strategic Development for the United Nations-backed organization Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), has years of experience in socially responsible investing. His SRI experience in Europe and the UK has given him unique insights to share in the US – a market in which, he says, there is still ‘a certain amount of uncertainty and skepticism' about SRI, as well as misunderstanding about the relationship between fiduciary duty and responsible investing. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: UN PRI, FSinsight.

Roger Urwin, Global Head of Investment Content at Towers Watson, says there are suspicions that the collateral benefits of sustainability may detract from the true purpose of pension funds, which is to make a profit. The benefits of sustainability are not the primary purpose; the primary purpose is to do a better long-term investment job. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG USA 2011 conference, New York, 13 December 2011.

More information: Towers Watson Investment Consulting, FSinsight.

Wolfgang Engshuber, Chair of United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) summarizes the development of the company over the last six years: “The honeymoon is over.” He goes on to describe the desired direction for UN PRI: “Globally represented, covering the whole investment universe and signatories who have impact on major themes.” The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG Europe 2011 conference, Amsterdam, 4-5 October 2011.

More information: UN PRI, FSinsight.

The tipping point of sustainability and responsibility in finance is happening right now, says Noreena Hertz, Professor of Globalization, Sustainability and Finance at Duisenberg School of Finance and Erasmus University. The interview, courtesy of FS Insight and Holland Financial Centre, was recorded during Responsible Investor's ESG Europe 2011 conference, Amsterdam, 4-5 October 2011.

More information: Duisenberg School of Finance, FSinsight.

SAM (Sustainable Asset Management) CEO, Michael Baldinger interview on Sustainability Investing. Joining the debate will be Daniel Wild, Head of Research and Marc-Olivier Buffle, Senior Analyst, to explain SAM´s Corporate Sustainability Assessment and its meaning for investors.

More information: SAM on Sustainability Investing.

Lord Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at LSE addresses climate change and opportunities for investors, interviewed by Brendan Maton, pensions journalist.

Marcel Jeucken, head of responsible investment at PGGM Investments, talks about ESG integration, RI performance and corporate engagements and exclusions.

More information: Responsible Investment at PGGM.

Responsible-Investor and IPE brought together eight investment professions to discuss the results of the RI Landscape 2008 Asset Owners survey. Participating: Michael Atzwanger, PensPlan; Erik Christiansen, ERAPF; Xavier Desmadryl, HSBC Investments; Christian Gollier, joint holder of the French university chair devoted to responsible investment and sustainable finance; Dr Marcel Jeucken, PGGM; Aled Jones, UK Pension Protection Fund; Liam Kennedy, IPE; Michel Lemonnier representing the French Asset Management Association; Raj Thamotheram, AXA Investment Managers; Hugh Wheelan, Responsible Investor.

More information: Read the survey results and report.

Rob Lake, senior portfolio manager for environmental, social and governance at ABP, the €221bn ($311bn) pension fund for Dutch civil servants, talks clean tech, engagement and cluster bombs.

David Russell, co-head of Responsible Investment at the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the €31bn ($46bn) second largest UK pension fund, explains how its SRI strategy is not just about risk but also reward.

More information: Read the interview transcript, USS.

One of the world's most prominent corporate governance activists since the 1970s, Bob Monks talks about engagement, hedge fund activists, private equity and why 'discouraged' is not part of his vocabulary.

More information: Read the interview transcript.