GEPF shows value of governance
A controversial loan and an accounting scandal at an investee company demonstrate the value of ESG practices at the $131 billion South African Government Employees Pension Fund.
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Director nominations: findings from the PRI-led collaborative engagement
“At West Midlands we believe robust governance makes companies much more resilient to shocks,” says Leanne Clements, responsible investment officer at the Wolverhampton-based £11.4 billion West Midlands Pension Fund. It’s the reason why the UK local authority fund has been working with an ongoing PRI-led collaborative engagement process exploring different corporate practices around director nominations
Asset owners step up battle against climate change
Spurred on by its vocal student body and a rich ESG precedent it’s no surprise that the $91 billion University of California is leading on climate change investment. “We thought about our beliefs and realised that climate change matters because it will impact our investments over the long term. We can’t afford to sit idly
Big owners should act like big owners
One of the key ways that institutional investors can promote a long-term orientation in the companies they invest, is by rejecting a company’s compensation plan if it puts too much emphasis on short-term results, says Bob Pozen, visiting senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Writing in the Financial Analysts Journal, he says
The power of engagement
It is called the “CalPERS’ Effect” but it could easily be called the asset owner effect, or the institutional investor effect, or the power of engagement effect. Wilshire, which is a consultant to the $300 billion Californian fund CalPERS, has provided an update on its study measuring the effect of engagement on a targeted list of companies called the Focus List.
Home bias in corporate engagement revealed
Investors should take care in selecting corporate engagement firms to ensure the engagement reflects their portfolio holdings, warn academics at Oxford and Maastricht Universities following a new study which reveals a home bias in such activity. As the investment portfolios of large institutional investors become increasingly global, it is particularly important that they carefully select
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