As an investor, the goal is to manage your portfolio to meet specific risk and return objectives. As a responsible investor, that goal takes on an additional facet: achieving your desired risk-return profile in a way that improves the resilience of your portfolio—and of financial markets—over the long term. After all, who says today’s returns have to come at the expense of tomorrow’s?
However, although interest in sustainable investing has grown rapidly, markets have been slower to develop the basic tools — let alone the structural underpinnings — needed to fully support this type of big-picture, long-term approach to investing. The good news? Recent market innovations indicate those shortcomings may soon be a thing of the past.

The evolution of ESG
For years, active asset managers have led the way in integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into the investment process, seeking attractively priced issuers with strong financial and sustainability fundamentals. For example, at the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the earliest users of our standards included a number of fundamental managers, who applied SASB’s framework to their analysis of equity and fixed income issuers. Similarly, active fund managers were among the first investors to license SASB standards and intellectual property for use in their investment processes. Long before ESG was a mainstream buzzword, these investors helped move the needle by facilitating the allocation of capital to companies with clear strategies for long-term value creation — and they continue to do so today.
Meanwhile, index fund managers have increasingly joined the charge, further expanding the options available to investors who want to pursue an integrated ESG strategy across multiple asset classes. For example, State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), which has licensed the SASB framework since 2017, recently used it to develop R-Factor™, a unique ESG scoring system designed to address market concerns about ESG data quality, availability, and relevance to investors. Similarly, by building on the work of SSgA, SASB, and others, Bloomberg this week launched an innovative family of equity and fixed income indices that enable investors to apply SASB’s financial materiality-based framework to passive ESG strategies.

Tomorrow’s investment tools today
By employing focused, transparent methodologies that “offer companies a roadmap” on how to benchmark ESG performance and disclose their ESG practices, these emerging products move ESG forward in an important but often overlooked way: they incentivise corporate performance on a market-informed subset of business-critical, industry-specific ESG factors. As such, they’re terrific examples of the market bringing materiality-based ESG investing to life. Indeed, we have always viewed SASB standards as important market infrastructure that can help investors integrate ESG factors into decision making in a rigorous, scalable way.
It goes without saying that the SASB Foundation, our governing body, has an interest in any capital market infrastructure that may incentivise companies to more effectively measure, manage, and report on the financially material ESG factors identified by the 77 SASB industry standards. These new tools are purposefully designed to both enhance corporate disclosure practices and incentivise improved performance on SASB metrics. For example, State Street shares R-Factor scores with companies through its stewardship program, creating positive feedback loops, while the Bloomberg SASB ESG indices explicitly incorporate specific SASB performance metrics into their methodologies. From transparency to performance and back again, the intended result is a virtuous cycle of improved market efficiency.
It is for these reasons that, since 2014, the SASB Foundation has licensed its standards and related resources to power a variety of investment strategies, platforms, and products. In addition to those mentioned above, examples include investment strategies from Russell Investments, services from TruValue Labs and RepRisk, and indices developed by ET Index. The Bloomberg SASB ESG family of indices is the latest addition to a growing array of SASB-powered tools available to all types of investors.

Sustainability at scale
Collectively, the expanding array of SASB-based investment tools presents a unique opportunity to advance SASB’s mission. Our purpose is not just to create disclosure standards for their own sake, but as a mechanism for building more resilient and efficient capital markets that can support sustainable economic growth.
We believe the recently announced Bloomberg SASB ESG indices, along with the R-Factor scores that underly them, will help accelerate corporate reporting on key sustainability factors and, by extension, improved corporate performance on those factors. Furthermore, they will enable us to reach even more companies and investors to invite them into our standard-setting process, thereby ensuring the standards retain their technical rigor and continue to reflect a broad, balanced range of market perspectives.
The SASB standards are designed to facilitate a simple but powerful idea — that the key to unlocking sustainable, long-term value creation is viewing ESG through the lens of financial materiality. Academic research has shown the SASB approach can help companies enhance business outcomes, including their return on sales, sales growth, return on assets, and return on equity, in addition to improved risk-adjusted shareholder returns.
But the promise of SASB standards will only be realised if they are just that: widely used market standards. Incorporating SASB standards into an array of investment tools and products helps establish the standards as an essential tool for companies to communicate ESG performance to their investors. The Bloomberg SASB ESG indices are not the first step along that path, and they won’t be the last. This is because widespread use of SASB standards incentivises not just ESG transparency, but ESG performance — which is ultimately what benefits companies, investors, and society at large the most.

Transforming markets together
At SASB, we believe 21st century challenges call for innovative solutions. For too long, sustainability disclosure has been viewed as a burden for companies — with companies unclear as to whether and how investors use sustainability information. With financial materiality as their North Star, today’s forward-thinking investors are exploring the common ground where sustainability and finance intersect, unlocking value for active, passive, and hybrid portfolios and portfolio companies alike.
Indeed, as the research shows, when sustainability efforts are well-aligned with corporate strategy, they can deliver benefits for all types of investors, across all asset classes, and over a range of investment horizons. And when sustainability investment tools are well-designed — with appropriate transparency and clear links to financial outcomes — they have the power to transform not only individual portfolios but the global capital markets in which they operate.

Janine Guillot is the director of capital markets policy and outreach at SASB, where she leads outreach to investors to support demand for standardised disclosure of financially material sustainability factors.

A large number of long-only multi-factor strategies have performed disappointingly over the past three years. Some have called into question the usefulness of solutions based on factor diversification but recent research by EDHEC suggests this doesn’t hold up against an even remotely serious investigation.

A large number of long-only multi-factor strategies have performed disappointingly over the past three years. This shift has led some commentators to call into question the very usefulness of solutions based on factor diversification, and notably the fact that the crowding effect was supposed to be the source of the disappearance of factor premia. However, we find in recent research that this suggestion does not hold up against an even remotely serious investigation. Rather it is the non-control of market beta exposure in a bull market context that has prevented factor indices from benefitting fully from the important market risk premium. It is this poor market conditionality, rather than variations in factor returns, that explains the recent disappointing performance of long-only factor offerings.

What are the drivers of the performance of factor strategies?

Commentators’ criticisms have tended to be based on assertions that have not been proven empirically, are not supported by serious academic research and ignore the very nature of factor strategy performance drivers. The latter is based on three main elements:

  1. Exposure to rewarded factors. While there are a large number of risk factors that can explain the variation in a stock or a portfolio of stocks’ returns over a period, there is a very limited number of factors that are considered to be rewarded in the sense that they not only have explanatory power over the variations in returns, but also explain the cross-sectional differences in returns of stocks or portfolios of stocks. These factors have been identified by academic research as being six in number, namely the value, momentum, size, low volatility, high profitability and low investment factors. The final two are often called quality factors.
  2. Good diversification of unrewarded idiosyncratic risk. Academic research shows that it is important for investors to strongly reduce idiosyncratic risks, those that are specific to each stock and which do not correspond to exposure to a systematic factor, because these risks are not rewarded. The usual way of reducing this in modern portfolio theory and construction is to diversify it. This allows the risk premia to be captured more efficiently.
  3. Management of systematic, non-factor risks. These risks are the undesired or implicit consequences of explicit choices of factor exposure or weighting schemes. When these implicit risk choices are not anticipated and controlled, they have significant consequences for the risk and performance profiles of factor strategies and can lead to strong differences in performance and risk for the same choice of factors over a given period.

These performance drivers have been the subject of many publications. However, one cannot but notice that in many critiques of the recent disappointing performance of factor strategies, they have been largely ignored in favour of highly-sample-dependent anecdotes and explanations that tend not to be based on rigorous observations.

Some of the explanations proposed were that some rewarded factors were no longer really rewarded (size) or that certain academic factor definitions were no longer appropriate (value) or indeed that the negative performance of factors was due to a crowding effect related to the very popularity of factor investing.

This is not the case. Rather, it is not the factors but the non-factor risks that are the source of the disappointing performance of the last three years. After analysing the performance of the factors and their consequences for the performance of a long-only multi-factor portfolio to place them in a long-term investment context, we will show the very simple impact of controlling or not controlling the non-factor risk to which all factor strategies are exposed, namely the market beta risk, on the performances of these same factor portfolios.

Performance and contribution of the factors

Within the US universe, three of the six long/short factors mentioned above have performed negatively over the past three years, namely size, value and momentum, and delivered much worse than the average negative performance observed since inception (21 June 2002). For momentum, this performance is even below its worst 5 per cent three-year rolling returns. For value, the performance is slightly above the worst 5 per cent and for size, the loss is close to the average of negative performance. On the developed ex-US universe the observation is quite similar.

However, in terms of both its value and its frequency, this negative performance is absolutely not abnormal and in no way constitutes a reason to call the premia associated with these factors into question.

With three factors out of six generating negative performance, it is expected that the analysis of the contribution of the factors as part of a multi-factor strategy will give mixed results. We therefore constructed single factor indices by using cap-weighted indices and adding a market-neutral long/short overlay and then built a multi-factor construction by aggregating these single long-only factor sleeves in the form of an equal-weighted six-factor index. This illustrated the previous results again, namely that three out of the six factors underperformed the broad cap-weighted index in the US region over the last three years, and three out of six in the Developed ex-US region.

However, if we instead use a perfect equal-weighted index, we observe that in both the US and Developed ex-US regions, this long-only factor construction outperformed the cap-weighted index over the same timespan (though admittedly to a lesser extent than over 15 years – 0.51 per cent compared to 2.45 per cent annual relative return for the US region and 0.55 per cent compared to 3.73 per cent for developed ex-US).

Hence, contrary to what is said by critics, a pure multi-factor construction continued to provide positive performance in the last three years.

It is therefore not so much the factors that are to blame in the performance but the construction choices of the multi-factor indices or portfolios offered by the providers. Among these design choices, some are constrained by the long-only regulatory framework of many funds or institutional investors. It is often difficult to set up pure factor strategies due to the inability to implement long/short strategies and the construction of long-only indices through the use of long/short overlays is difficult. Other choices correspond more to a lack of consideration of non-factor risks in the design of the index, where it involves documenting this risk in order to then manage it properly. In the next section, we will show that it is the lack of integration of the main non-factor risk that is the cause of the disappointment with factor strategies. 

Integrating the contribution of non-factor elements into the performance of single and multi-factor indices

The vast majority of long-only factor strategies were rarely neutral from a market exposure viewpoint; market betas are generally defensive and unstable. For the same construction of long-only indices where, if instead of taking market-neutral indices we take long/short dollar-neutral indices, it is clear that over the last three years, these indices without market-beta control have considerably underperformed their equivalents with a market-neutral market beta long/short overlay. For the US, the 0.51 per cent outperformance over the past three years flips to an underperformance of -1.4 per cent, and to
-1.02 per cent from 0.55 per cent for the developed ex-US. For both regions, the long-only multi-factor assembly does not allow the broad cap-weighted index to be outperformed, as was the case previously.

It is therefore indeed the uncontrolled market conditionality of factors that, in a context of strong bull markets this year, led to disappointing performance, and not the choice of factors or the traditional proxies that represent them. Comparing the conditional performances of dollar-neutral long/short factors over 15 years illustrates this point well. It is easy to observe that in a context of strong bull markets, particularly in the US, the poor conditionality of dollar-neutral long/short was highly penalising compared to the market-neutral version.

In addition to design questions, performance is a matter of fiduciary choice

The analysis that we have conducted on the performance of factor and multi-factor portfolios has allowed us to observe that even though negative performance has been observed for some factors in recent years, it has been possible to offset this through the good performance of other factors. In the strict sense, the factor contribution to the performance of the strategies is not overall negative.

The source of the poor performance therefore needs to be sought elsewhere. We observe that only multi-factor indices which benefitted from a risk-control option that guaranteed alignment of the market beta with that of the reference cap-weighted index were able to significantly improve relative returns. Naturally, taking this market variation risk into account is a fiduciary decision that falls outside of the remit of an index provider, as long of course as the index provider offers these options, which is rarely the case.

Daniel Aguet, head of indices, Scientific Beta; Noël Amenc, chief executive, Scientific Beta and Associate Dean for Business Development, EDHEC Business School; and Felix Goltz, research director, Scientific Beta

 

We published research on the culture of investment organisations in 2015, which was well-received and has been widely referenced. Since then we have updated it to incorporate fresh thinking on what makes culture ‘effective’ – that is how culture can help investment teams to deliver better performance and create more value. In this article we offer three high-level thoughts on how culture, as a topic within the investment industry, has evolved in this time; and three new ideas as to how culture can play a bigger and better part in our industry going forward.

Conversations about investment industry culture are starting to come to life

Culture conversations were not absent before, but they were often rather shallow. In the last few years there has been a much increased appreciation of the importance of culture to the effective practice of investment organisations. The growth in understanding of inclusion and diversity has been the most significant factor in this.

In addition, investment organisations have had to work hard to differentiate themselves under head-wind conditions and culture has received somewhat belated recognition as a critical source of competitive advantage. Culture discussions have, as a result, grown in clarity and impact more recently. Ideally they should also have grown in authenticity, but the results on this point are definitely more mixed. However, as we discuss under ‘purpose’ below, we have some optimism on this.

Previous thinking on culture often had the resigned idea that it was ‘fixed’, new thinking is seeing it as ‘movable’ and an opportunity for good design

Investment organisations have either been largely comfortable with their culture or resigned to living with it, thinking that not much about it could be changed. We now see culture more widely referenced in strategy discussions. So the current narrative is more about what does present culture allow to happen in an organisation’s business strategy, or what does that argue for as an appropriate target culture if an alternative strategy is preferred.

Connecting the dots from culture to strategy, to beliefs and values, and to vision and mission, and back again for that matter, has become a critical leadership challenge and opportunity. The art and science of management has developed a long way in the last few years and we now have much greater understanding of how to assess culture and how to adapt it, even in high velocity conditions.

The rise of more purposeful investment firms is of huge significance

This point is addressed to asset management firms not asset owners. Let’s face it, purpose was not a big part of the vision and culture of the asset management firm in the past. Indeed the trends we have seen for some time have been to strengthen the focus on business results with professionalism often giving ground to achieve this. To survive and thrive, purpose in the investment industry is now playing a bigger role. There are two compelling reasons why this makes sense.

First, employees are increasingly drawn to organisations that are purposeful and show social responsibility. This applies to all worker generations but particularly to millennials.

Then, organisations that are purposeful can benefit from more traction with and trust from their clients.

The purpose of investment organisations can be expansive and highly motivating. The opportunities start with the impacts to contribute to the pension savings of a very large range of people Then the positioning of investment organisations as ESG-sensitive investors and universal owners gives them a unique opportunity to produce inspiring societal and environmental impacts. Also think of firms combining a diverse array of talents, in teams, to achieve multiples more than could be accomplished singly, and enabling the best of our values to come to work. This can be dazzling stuff.

Culture set by design, providing opportunities for adaption and innovation

Let’s turn to some fresh ideas for the future.

With industry realities around over-capacity hitting home, organisations must get their sources of differentiation more effectively sized, shaped and socialised. Most cultural signatures I come across read too similarly. There are great opportunities for culture to take on a new ‘edginess’. There are a number of candidates for this, but I promote three ideas here.

First, diversity and inclusion is a great opportunity – most organisations are significantly underweight this cultural attribute but with deliberate leadership action they could be re-positioned.

Second, I think there are big opportunities in the culture of innovation, particularly in process innovation, with the influence of culture being to test and learn in a supportive environment that encourages creativity.

Third, there is great potential in an increased culture of openness in which transparency and feedback play a big part. This last cluster of attributes can take an organisation to much higher performance in learning from experience and the development of trust both in inward-facing and outward-facing contexts.

There is a particular role for culture at asset owner organisations

The focus on culture has to date been on asset management organisations. But asset owners have their significant cultural challenges and opportunities as their internal capabilities and team sizes grow. They should see culture as a critical vehicle to meeting their missions. This particularly applies to the bigger and longer-term funds. These are suited to cultures that draw strength from being very purpose driven. The adoption of universal owner thinking is likely to be a key part of their future vision and strategy in this respect.

Leadership’s role in cultural effectiveness

Leadership can build cultural effectiveness in three critical states of mind-set and competency: having the leadership awareness to recognise the influences of cultures and sub-cultures embedded throughout the organisation; having the sense of what direction of travel is desirable for culture – that could be in defending culture from dilution or addressing the need for culture to change; having the leadership agility to influence the culture outcomes through formal and informal channels.

We often talk of culture as a secret sauce and that is apt. We often miss the secret that culture is the reflection and creation of leaders past and present. The technical parts of the investment challenge have been substantially shaped over several decades, the human parts have further to travel. The challenge is for leaders to step up, be empathetic, be clear on values and show the courage and determination necessary to achieve important things for society’s greater good. I see those organisations that take on more purposeful culture being ultimately the organisations that will survive and thrive.

Roger Urwin is global head of investment content at the Thinking Ahead Institute.

Sovereign wealth funds can play an important role in investing sustainably in the Arctic region, and warding off the impact of a looming natural disaster, according to the IMF’s Udaibir Das.

The economic cost from natural disasters is a 2 to 4 per cent decline in GDP according to Udaibir Das, assistant director and advisor of the monetary and capital markets department at the IMF, speaking at the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Alaska about the impact of a “melting Arctic”.

The IMF forecasts the incidents of natural disasters is increasing, and a broader socioeconomic approach is needed to manage that.

“We want ESG embedded in the approach to investing in the region,” Das said. “We are very worried about climate and this should be the responsibilities of the states in the Arctic.”

Das said a melting Arctic may be viewed by some as a climate change a boon, in a reference to allowing a passageway for boats to pass through.

“But that’s a view if you only see revenues and returns. From a natural disaster point of view it is a threat and from a macro-economic view it’s looking disastrous.”

Das said the IMF forecasts that a 1 per cent increase in temperature for countries with an average temperature above 25 degrees will result in an output loss of 1.5 per cent and it would take seven to 10 years to overcome that. 

There are eight countries that have a geographical stake in the Arctic – Alaska (United States), Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Canada, Norway, Russia and Sweden – but there Das said there are another 13 non-Arctic countries, including China, which “have come up with a map of their own”.

“We need a more collective socio-economic view of the region, it’s not just about making way for boats to go through, this needs a more systematic solution to be sustainable. It’s more than just melting ice and need good analysis of socioeconomic impacts. That’s why this should be on the global agenda, not just left to the Arctic Council to work out,” he said.

“We need to lift the Arctic to something more significant then SWFs can play a role in sustainable finance and investing. ESG is a huge factor in this region because of the delirious effect.”

“There’s a lot that SWFs can do. But before we do anything, we at an international level have to ensure that the region comes up for sustainable investing and development and that cross border flows remain open.”

Das, who until recently managed the IMF’s Financial Sector Assessment Program and the development of fund policies and tools for systemic risk analysis and stress testing, was speaking on a panel with General David Petraeus, former director of the CIA and now chair of the KKR Global Institute.

Petraeus said that the big issue that looms over the Arctic is the same as those that involve multilateral discussions, and that is whether the US wants to allow multilateral organisations or negotiations.

“There is a US belief that we do better in bi-lateral negotiations. The most recent meeting of the Arctic Council was not allowed to issue a communique because the US would not agree to it, same with G7. I don’t want to imply a disagreement with that, but US has to have a forthright conversation with itself as to whether it will enable such organisations. The US will be a determinant on a lot of these issues,” he said.

“We need to build on what the common objectives are, and get some actual agreement and how it will be enforced.”

Australia’s sovereign wealth fund is looking to partner with top managers to find value in the rapidly-changing venture capital market but warned that the intense competition for assets makes closing deals difficult.

During the Australia Investment Council conference held in Melbourne on Wednesday, Wendy Norris, deputy chief investment officer, private markets for the A$160 billion Future Fund, said venture capital remains key to accessing the innovation cycle and disruptive technology. She further told delegates that venture – and growth capital – play an important role in the fund’s private equity program, with around A$15 billion invested currently.

In addition to accessing the innovation cycle, venture capital delivers an uncorrelated risk exposure.

To earn an acceptable return, the fund will keep a “laser-like” focus on partnering with top-quartile managers who are responding proactively to the changing macro-environment, Norris added.

“It puts the onus on us to make active hold or sell decisions about the individual stocks we end up owning when managers exit  their more mature investments in to the public markets.

“It also requires us to actively adjust our investment pacing decisions to reflect the longer expected hold periods across private equity and venture.”

Norris warned that the fund would continue to search for the right partners.

“Capital availability is like a pendulum and whilst it is very favourable towards managers right now, we know this will swing back at some stage and those who treat us well when capital is abundant will find us to be a great partner through leaner times.”

The deputy investment chief noted that market changes are affecting both the private equity and venture capital industries.

“In the private equity market, we see fund managers that are awash with capital striving to deliver the same returns they have delivered in the past.  This is despite strong market competition for deals and less use of leverage,” she said.

For their part, she continued, venture companies are staying private for longer. As companies no longer look to public markets to fund their expansion stages, private funds are supplanting the role of IPOs.

Norris also noted that from the investor’s perspective, the return dispersion between best and worst performing venture funds is large, and average market performance has been “average”.

However, she conceded that there were fewer attractive investment opportunities which forces them to look for places where they can earn greater returns.  “The illiquidity, complexity and skill premia that are available in private markets start to look very attractive.”

During her speech to the AIC, Norris said privately-held investments have grown twice as fast as public markets in the last decade. They now account for more than US$6 trillion of market value – almost 10 per cent of global investment assets.

Further, she underlined two key challenges when investing in private markets – navigating all the complexity and paying away a larger portion of the excess return through fees.  Also, she went on to say, as an investor, you end up with a less flexible portfolio. “There is a very real risk that you may not be able to meet the liquidity demands of your beneficiaries when they make them.”

“This means that all investors, including the Future Fund, need to be thoughtful about how they navigate the balance of risks and rewards in private markets and how they can gain access to the best opportunities, while all the time continuing to adapt and improve their investment processes to keep up.”

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are long-term investors and will weather whatever storm is coming, says Majed Al Romaithi, chair of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IFSWF) and executive director of the strategy and planning department at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, who also encouraged investors to consider risk in a more “sophisticated” way.

“We need to differentiate between the news and what’s happening, this is not as bad as people think. There is a storm, but unless you are invested one day before, we will weather it. I’d encourage people to think of risk in a more sophisticated way, volatility is only one risk,” he said. “As long-term investors sovereign wealth funds can handle volatility. Those that avoid volatility generally have very low returns but a well-built portfolio will become resilient to these problems.”

He said that SWFs over the years had been gravitating to private market and alternatives in the bid to generate more alpha in those areas. That trend will continue, he said, and the role of fixed income was also being questioned.

“Right now the role of government bonds is being questioned by SWFs in their portfolios,” he said.

Al Romaithi, who has been chair of IFSWF since 2018, was speaking at the 11th annual meeting of members. The organisation started 11 years ago with the impetus to increase transparency and promote good governance among SWFs. This year the organisation welcomed new members Fonsis from Senegal, the Egypt Fund, Cyprus, Mongolia, BPI in France, and the NIIF in India.

Angela Rodell, vice chair of IFSWF and chief executive of Alaska Permanent Fund, said the effort of inclusion, transparency and a focus on good governance, had created a lot of trust and respect between the SWFs.

She said that has now allowed for the ability to create another platform, and a lot of thought by the board is being put into that platform to see what IFSWF and its members can do, beyond the Santiago Principles.

Rodell, whose fund was the host of the 11th meeting in Juneau, said this includes looking at the recognition of SWFs’ influence, and the issues it can impact such as resource allocation, job creation and climate.

“Are there commonalities we want to put our efforts behind?” she asked. “This is testament to the work put in for IFSWF’s foundations. We have candid conversations about where we need to invest and what the limitations are.”

Al Romaithi said the forum was a place for collaboration and partnerships, something SWFs were increasingly embracing.

“Partnerships are an area to grow and develop, we all have different networks and when combined are more powerful and effective,” he said.

“SWFs are also increasingly pooling their networks and expertise for mutual benefit by collaborating with a broader range of partners in both new and innovative platforms, as well as more traditional private-equity style transactions. Given the global networks and resources at our disposal, I believe we can better leverage the member relationships to explore opportunities for joint investments between sovereign wealth fund.”

He said investing together meant diversification without concentration, especially for smaller funds such as development funds.

Rodell said Alaska’s experience of partnerships had been beneficial as a smaller fund ($65 billion) with limited resources.

“We have been figuring how to leverage our knowledge and contacts. We have to be creative because we’re smaller. You can be blinded to opportunities until you get outside your own organisation and see someone else’s perspective,” she said.

The IFSWF meeting looked at digital disruption and the use of big data and the analysis of companies given the potential disruption in industries such as healthcare, water and resource efficiency, energy and agri-business. 

“I started my career as equities analyst and that job today is very different using big data and analytics. Some of the best managers in the world would call themselves tech companies. The way we work will change, in the future it will be totally different. We spend a lot of time thinking about what the investment organisation of the future will look like, and the more we look at it the more we are sure it won’t look the same,” Al Romaithi said.