Investment professionals appear to be rethinking the assets they consider ESG amid anti-greenwashing proposals this year from the SEC. The total amount of money that US asset managers and institutions call ESG is just half of what it was two years ago, going from $17.1trn in 2020 to $8.4trn this year, according to results of … Read more

State Street Global Advisors is planning to let many of its clients have a say in proxy votes, the company announced today. That decision follows recent moves by Vanguard and BlackRock to extend voting choices to individual investors. It also comes as the big asset managers have been targeted by conservative groups and numerous US … Read more

The business case for why we need greater gender diversity amongst leaders and decision makers and the reasons for why we currently do not have this in many industries, politics and sport have been discussed, analysed, and well documented particularly over the past five years.  Unfortunately, there is no one silver bullet to fix the … Read more

French banks have come out on top on climate and biodiversity in a recent analysis by ShareAction. In its report, Debt to the Planet, the financial NGO assessed 25 of Europe’s largest banks by total assets according to the S&P 2022 list, ranking them on biodiversity and climate metrics. Three French banks – BNP Paribas, … Read more

Nature Action 100, a global investor engagement initiative to reduce nature loss and biodiversity decline, was launched at COP15 in Montreal yesterday. Similar to Climate Action 100+, Nature Action 100 brings investors together to collaboratively engage corporates, but on nature-related risks and dependencies instead of on climate. Focus companies will be those the initiative sees … Read more

Following COP27 and as COP15 is underway, one phrase which has continued to dominate is Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Governments are increasingly focusing on them in the context of mitigation, adaptation and efforts to ensure our societies and economies build-up resilience to deal with the degree of climate change which is now inevitable. NbS are increasingly … Read more

Industry experts – and the UK government’s own climate committee – have said the approval for a new coal mine puts into doubt the UK’s commitment to net zero and ability to be a “green leader”. After two years of discussions, this week the government gave the greenlight to the first new coal mine in … Read more

Global demand for timber over the next 30 years is set to increase threefold from today, according to Olly Hughes, managing director, forestry, at Gresham House. In this Green Dream video interview, Hughes also discusses the positives and negatives of plantation timber, and what investors can expect from investing in a timber fund. Watch the full video … Read more

The ESG backlash in the US is inspiring a lot of column inches, but behind the scenes, progress from regulators and financial institutions is being made. Speaking to ESG Clarity at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Kristina Wyatt, deputy general counsel and senior vice-president of global regulatory climate disclosure at carbon management and accounting platform Persefoni, … Read more

Index provider FTSE Russell and financial services group Ping An have launched an ESG China index series. The FTSE Ping An China ESG Index Series is designed around China’s unique development trajectory and ESG issues and is available to domestic and offshore investors. The series uses Ping An’s ESG framework of 4,000 A-shares to translate … Read more