ESG Archive

Hedge fund firms expect to increase the amount they invest based on ESG factors next year, according to Iowa-based BarclayHedge. Fifty-eight percent of hedge fund assets will be tied to ESG criteria in 2020, up from 42 percent last year and the current 52 percent, BarclayHedge finds in a survey of global hedge fund managers and commodity trading advisers. ‘The increasing role of ESG ratings among the survey participants isn’t surprising,’ Sol Waksman, p...

As the integration of ESG factors into investment decision-making becomes increasingly mainstream, over-reliance on simple answers and third-party industry data, rather than assessing complexities and directly engaging with companies, could lead to smaller companies being unfairly penalized by investors on the basis of partially informed ESG criteria.  The disparity between larger and smaller companies’ disclosure of basic ESG metrics is striking and, even in dev...

Mounting evidence confirms companies can ‘do well by doing good.’ Now researchers are digging deeper into the nuances of that relationship and discovering the need to distinguish between different types of sustainability practices. A key question facing boards today is whether sustainability amounts to a differentiating strategy leading to competitive advantage or a practice bound to spread through imitation and thus important for corporate survival but not nece...

Nuveen launched a dedicated ESG strategy back in 1990. How did that come about? AOB: Nuveen – and TIAA more broadly – has been involved in investment-related activities leveraging ESG factors since the 1970s, when the first shareholder proposals on social issues began appearing on company ballots in the US. We launched our first ESG-focused funds in 1990, in response to growing client demand for such options. For us, responsible investing ...