投资者在ESG达成共识作为信托义务

James Andrus of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System defines fiduciary duty differently today than he did a decade ago, even though the laws governing it in his state and the U.S. have remained constant.

“As a practical matter, the definition of fiduciary duty has not changed,” notes Andrus, a portfolio manager on the global governance team at$286 billion CalPERS. “But the view has developed over the past ten years that if you are a long-term investor, you have to take environmental, social and governance factors into consideration because of the adverse implications of not doing so.”

马克卡尼, governor of the Bank of England, reflected that view in a上个月的演讲在U.K.保险公司伦敦的总部。“科学证据重量和金融体系动态的组合表明，在充满时期，气候变化将威胁到金融恢复力和长期繁荣，”卡尼告诉保险业成员。

信托税法旨在确保金钱经理以其受益者的最佳利益行事。Pension fundswidely accept the necessity of such measures, but debates have erupted in recent years around the laws’ true intent as integration of so-called ESG factors has grown more popular.

One central question: Can asset owners and their managers consider nonfinancial factors like a company’s carbon exposure or recent human rights violations, even if immediate effects on financial returns are only part of their motivation?

The authors of a new report published by the United Nations hope to end this debate.Fiduciary Duty in the 21st Century是由U.N的2005年报告的后续行动。从伦敦的国际律法公司Freshfields Bruckhaus dereringer委托。该报告将投资者的注意力与其发表的声明有关，使ESG因素是投资过程的一部分是“明确允许的，可以说是有可能的。”

The 2015 document, whose four authors include Rory Sullivan, a senior research fellow with the Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the University of Leeds, goes further. “The conclusion of this report is there’s so much evidence of change in the ten years since the Freshfields report that it’s actually reasonable to say there is a positive duty to consider ESG,” says Nathan Fabian, London-based head of policy and research at Principles for Responsible Investment, a U.N.-led investor network.

In countries such as the U.K., Japan and South Africa, regulators have introduced voluntary stewardship codes whose investor signatories commit to engaging with companies. Next January the Canadian province of安大略省will join Germany, Spain, Sweden and several other nations by requiring pension funds to disclose if they’ve incorporated ESG factors into their investment processes.

但是，法比安指出，市场仍然缺乏全面ESG整合是否违反了信托责任。在美国，特别是“一套特定的法律文书和指导票据导致对一个非常狭隘的框架中对信托义务的流行了解，”他说。

安德鲁斯及其基于萨克拉门托的同事CalPERSinterpret that frame as wide enough to include ESG. As a matter of policy, the largest U.S. public pension fund asks all of its internal and external managers to incorporate these factors into their investment decisions. The emphasis that CalPERS puts on ESG will only grow stronger, says Andrus, who is a member of U.N. PRI’s research and policy committee and was interviewed for the recent fiduciary duty report.

“向前展望，一切都平等，如果两个管理者来到卡波人，一个有ESG能力和一个没有，我们与前者一起去，”他解释道。“在某些情况下，我们要求管理人员发展ESG能力。”

Michael McCauley, senior officer of investment programs and governance at the State Board of Administration of Florida, acknowledges that the board of trustees, management and staff who help manage the SBA’s $180 billion in assets “get a little anxious” about the idea of integrating ESG factors into the portfolio.

麦卡雷伊说，员工考虑监测公司的环境，社会和治理政策“以非常基本的水平”，以监测公司的环境，社会和治理政策“的一部分。但是，当涉及使用ESG分析来试图管理长期风险时，他认为不准确的预测可能在没有水晶球的情况下。

“我认为长期真的非常过分，”麦考秀说。“它成为这个抽象的概念。你不能建模15年;周围这些估计的不确定性锥度是巨大的。你出去了超过五到十年，这就像投掷飞镖。“

Those who call for a rethink of fiduciary duty by pulling in more ESG analysis tend to assume that analysts know what’s going to happen in energy and other industries over the medium to long term, McCauley argues. That can create a compulsion to phase out investments in certain sectors, overlooking their current returns, he says.

For CalPERS’s part, Andrus says that because the pension provider needs to be invested widely across the market for the long term, he and his colleagues consider the health of the economy as a whole. “If you’re concerned about the overall economy, part of what that means is we need clear air, clean water, the lack of climate change and all of those other things in order to be able to fulfill our obligations,” he contends. “If we’re not focused on those things with the companies in which we invest, we’re not fulfilling our fiduciary duty.”

Fabian的U.n. Pria认为，在未来几年内，信托辩论将遵守大部分勘查问题如何影响财务价值。如果两者之间的关系保持不断增强，“我认为投资实践将超越这种狭隘的定义，”他说。