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| Race to become the world’s green finance capital gathers pace
Asset managers looking for sustainable ways to invest have had a lively week. It started when the EU’s latest social bond to fund its coronavirus-related unemployment scheme racked up orders worth more than 10 times the size of the issue, with demand exceeding EUR100 billion.
The US is expected to be joining the fray too, as President elect Joe Biden seeks to enact a USD2 trillion sustainable infrastructure plan.
To rival this, the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak outlined his vision of restoring the UK to the position of "world's pre-eminent financial centre" after Brexit, as well as fulfilling the country’s legally-binding commitment to net zero by 2050.
A raft of green finance initiatives were also announced by Sunak, including a plan to offer the country’s first ever sovereign green bond, a move that investors including BlackRock, AXA Investment Managers, and Columbia Threadneedle have been calling for since last year. The inaugural ‘green gilt’ issuance is expected to be heavily oversubscribed.
This may go some way to closing the investment gap for achieving the UK’s net zero target, which the Green Alliance has estimated at GBP11.4 billion for this year alone.
Sunak also revealed that large companies will soon face stricter climate disclosure requirements, which will help asset managers assess an investment’s true ESG credentials.
An air of ESG transparency is also blowing in some investment firms. In an Institutional Asset Manager exclusive, Neuberger Berman (NB) unveiled plans to publicly announce which way it will vote on over 100 shareholder proposals, ahead of the voting. NB’s Jonathan Bailey says the company is hitting back at the common practice of ‘robo-voting’, and proving the worth of active management against passive products.
As asset managers struggle against sharper fee compression, with new research revealing that a growing proportion of managers offer half-price fees for new fund launches, sustainability could be the new edge.
Madeleine Taylor
Editor, Institutional Asset Manager
[email protected]
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| Majority of asset managers see brand interest decline for second year running | | Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17 | | The majority of the largest asset managers worldwide faced a second consecutive year of declining interest in their corporate brands, according to Peregrine Communications’ second annual Global 100 report into the integrated marketing communications (IMC) performance of the asset management industry. |
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