Contents

Responsible Investment: Profiting from sustainable strategies

Chapter 1: Introduction

  • Defining the term ‘responsible investment’
    • Origination and development – from the first seeds to today
    • Player dynamics – understanding how the protagonists fit together
    • Innovations and the current responsible investment landscape 

Chapter 2: Responsible investment and climate change

  • Factors that have influenced investor behaviour to include: carbon trading, government initiatives etc. Is it really a new issue?
    • Reactions for government, business and financial services
  • UN Principles of Responsible Investment
  • Future initiatives
    • The financial implications of global warming and climate change on the world economy
    • Response and reaction from government, world business and the financial services sector
    • Policies and initiatives to tackle climate change across the globe
    • UNPRI - Assessment of impact 

Back to top

Chapter 3: Socially responsible investment and the moral dynamic

  • The complexity of measuring socially responsible investment
  • Investment as a driver for social change
  • Identifying the key social issues affected by investor behaviour
  • Which stocks are held up as ‘ethically/morally’ unpalatable to investors?
  • Can there be a truly ‘end to end’ ethical company
    • Complete transparency
    • Cost implications

Chapter 4: Responsible investment as a driver of wealth

  • Sustainable indices
    • How do they work? What do they include? How widely used?
  • Responsible investment cost premiums versus long-term profitability

Chapter 5: The asset management community

  • European and UK fund managers’ attitudes to RI
  • RI as a driver of business
  • Responding to the retail investor and IFA community
  • Benchmarking as an engagement strategy
  • RI and stock picking
    • Positive screening/preference
    • Negative screening/avoidance
    • Analysis approaches
    • Engagement and changing behaviour
    • The long term and short term view
    • What represents a truly responsible stock
  • Fund managers and relationships with investment banks
    • Demands and special requirements for compliance
    • Limitations
    • High Net Worth individuals

Back to top

Chapter 6: Investment banks

  • Investment banks as pivotal players in RI
    • Differing approaches to RI
    • Assessing ‘bang for the buck’
  • The commercial case for RI
    • How are banks exploiting growth in demand for RI
  • Responsible investment as an investment banking priority
  • Sustainable banking
  • Triodos: The ethical bank 

Chapter 7: Pension funds as responsible investors

  • The importance of the pension fund community to the growth in responsible investment
  • Fiduciary duty versus responsible investment
    • Regulatory requirements
    • Best practice guidelines
  • A growing appetite among pension funds for responsible investment
  • Case Study: ABP
  • RI investment as a percentage of pension fund holdings
    • Size matters: types of pension fund in the RI market
  • Defined benefit support for RI
  • The growth of defined contribution and its implications for RI
  • Pension fund intermediaries and attitudes to RI
    • Formulating RI strategies for pension funds
    • Dedicated RI consultants
    • Recommendations and shortlisting RI fund managers
    • How are investment consultants standardising SRI in manager searches?
    • Pension fund case study: the £38bn Universities Superannuation Scheme
    • Viewpoint: The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change

Back to top

Chapter 8: Private equity as a driver of responsible investment

  • Case study: Doughty Hanson
  • Case study: Actis/CDC

Chapter 9: Responsible investment in developing markets

  • Shariah funds
    • Performance and products
    • Appetite and assets under management
  • Microfinance
    • Supporting infrastructure
    • Supporting individuals
    • The ethics of profiting from the world’s poor

Chapter 10: Corporate governance and shareholder influence

  • Best practice guidelines and regulatory obligation, Company Law
  • Understanding how shareholders can influence company behaviour
  • Consultants and proxy voting agencies
    • How shareholder voting works
  • Measuring effectiveness of shareholder voting
    • What impact has shareholder voting had on corporate behaviour?
    • How is this measured?
    • Identifying inadequacies
  • Class action lawsuits
    • What happens when shareholders take companies to court
    • Past cases and outcomes
    • Will we become more litigious for the sake of RI?

Chapter 11: Conclusions

Back to top