Special Report: Sustainable Investing

Thematic approaches are behind a growing number of sustainable investment strategies, but not all are focused on identifying companies that are purposefully driving solutions to ESG-related challenges. Among the sustainable investment strategies offered by AGF Investments, their thematic strategy helps define and allocate investments to a universe of companies that is genuinely committed to a more sustainable economy – in other words, it’s not enough for a company to show slight improvement in reducing carbon emissions, for example, if its overall mission isn’t pursuing a sustainability related solution. Within its set of themes and sub-themes, AGF scours the investible universe for innovative problem solvers, and other opportunities across the value chains of those innovators. In this conversation, AGF’sMartin Grosskopf（左侧），副总裁兼投资组合经理，Hyewon Kong(center)那Associate Portfolio Manager, andVishal Bané (right)，投资分析师分享他们对具有真正影响的可持续投资的方法见解。

主题方法在哪里适合可持续投资策略的范围？

Martin Grosskopf:重要的是要通过投资目标的镜头查看可持续投资的频谱。雇用ESG因素的大多数策略用作额外的风险管理层 - 基本上增强了传统方法。不太常见的是使用可持续发展主题来识别可能提供解决方案的公司将越来越有利地提供解决方案的方法。我们觉得主题方法有可能以更有影响力的方式为投资者提供接触可持续性问题 - 同时会议返回目标。

在这种情况下，专题可持续投资策略似乎正在获得势头。这是为什么？

赫姆孔：The data in a new report from a global sustainable investment alliance shows that two years ago about $270 billion was allocated to thematic sustainable strategies, and that now it’s above $1 trillion. So thematic strategies are really starting to resonate with investors. Many pension funds, especially in Europe, have traditionally used negative screening as their primary ESG strategy, but more and more they are incorporating the UN sustainable development goals, and those are more aligned with thematic investing.

Grosskopf：使用主题提供了一种镜头，我们可以用来识别市场中的长期机会。我们有兴趣从未来的可持续发展方面取得成功模型的公司有兴趣，这就是我们的主题方法 - 我们寻找具有最多畅通的公司随着时间的推移提供可持续性解决方案。从该角度来看，我们的主题方法与使用ESG基准的传统方法完全不同。

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从过渡到可持续经济的机会

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在可持续策略中，主题的分类是什么样的？

Grosskopf：我们将可持续投资宇宙分解为四个宏观主题的水，浪费，能源和健康生活。我们在那些我们按价值链填充的那些下面有很多子主题。例如，我们将电动车辆和自动车辆视为一个主题，我们将其占据了价值链，一直从挖掘到电池制造商，进入DOOMATION公司的半导体公司，并进入OEM。

Vishal Bané:另一个非常有趣的子主题是食物，它解决了相当多的可持续发展目标，如健康和福祉。因此，食品具有重要的长期ESG影响，并且从投资角度来看，这是一个重要的部门，因为传统食品的增长率 - 说奶酪和肉 - 持续削弱。在全球范围内，消费者要求更好的营养和更多的天然成分，以及对包装和标签的监管需求继续发展。因此，识别创新的公司成为符合这些要求的转型的一部分，对投资者具有专题和长期影响。这包括大帽公司，绝望地推动长期增长。有时一家公司地址多个主题。例如，如果公司正在寻求健康的生活，更安全的产品，水和更好的空气质量 - 如果与企业用途保持一致和使命 - 这是帮助他们创造更好的现金流量和更高的利润率。我们看到很多公司受益于这些循环司机。

您能否描述如何评估公司是否值得投资？

Grosskopf：我们的重点是在我们提到的主题中提供解决方案的公司。这是一个重要的区别。我们不一定对企业感兴趣，这些企业只是做得更好地管理环境问题的工作。我们正在寻找提供人们受益的实用解决方案的公司。We filter the global universe of opportunities to come up with a smaller list, and even that small list is close to 1,000 companies that we think have exposure, in some fashion, to the themes that we’re interested in. That doesn’t mean that they’re immediately attractive for investment, but it provides us with a universe to say, ‘Okay, this company might have 10% exposure regarding renewable energy, but is that going to be an attractive growth driver in the future? Is it going to allow that company to generate higher returns?’ If the company is taking that particular exposure seriously, and applying their capital to it, and growing that within the context of their competitive environment, that’s interesting to us. We’ve been following these things a long, long time, and we have a good handle on who does have exposure in the various areas. Of course, we supplement that with our internal and external research. Increasingly the sell side is becoming engaged on thematics, so they’re drawing out companies that may be interesting, from a thematic standpoint.

Bané:We also talk to company managements. We recently met with the management of one of our portfolio companies – a food company – and we were very impressed with the management’s philosophy of nurturing the trend towards natural, healthier food, where they work with smaller private labels and are prepared to compromise on their short-term pricing power so that all of these smaller players can grow enabling growth of healthier food trend. It’s this holistic approach to innovation, to longer term exposure to the themes we care, that strengthens our conviction regarding the company’s long-term story.

Grosskopf：That’s a good point to raise, because what we tend to find in the market is that investors are still obsessed with whether a company has increased its capital spending on a particular project, and what impact that might have on the very short-term quarterly results. That point of view tends to ignore the three- or four-year return that investment will provide because they are innovating around natural, or more environmentally friendly products or ingredients. Our clients are quite aware of what we’re trying to accomplish, and where we fit in with their overall strategy.

Does a thematic approach have an effect on diversification?

Grosskopf：The portfolio that we have is very diversified across economic sectors, and also within a portfolio context as one of the tools within a toolkit. We have very high active share to conventional benchmarks – easily around 98% active share. So, there’s definite diversification benefits. We have a very off-benchmark sector allocation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an extreme bias towards one segment of the economy.

有没有相当普遍的拥抱，通过可持续性问题如何影响他们未来的成功和价值，或者有些仍然需要令人信服？

孔：现在我不会说通用,但伴随矩阵ies that are hungry for the growth have to look at where customer demand is heading, and they have to be well positioned to meet it. It’s difficult to not look at sustainability issues when you’re looking at the three- to five-year business strategy – where the business has to innovate and put more capital toward that innovation.

Grosskopf：越来越多的投资者鼓励公司解决可持续发展问题，无论是通过业务的战略或治理框架。投资者想知道公司正在采取的行动以及提供什么样的披露公司。我们将继续看到投资者的增加，鼓励公司解决可持续发展挑战。

了解有关AGF的全球专题策略的更多信息，帮助投资者为更可持续的经济提供贡献。

Mary Jane McQuillen，在ClearBridge的环境，社会和治理（ESG）投资负责人，是资产管理行业的一小组投资组合管理人员，他们一直将ESG考虑整合到股权投资过程中，并提高了对几个投资的可持续性价值的认识几十年。玛丽简，或MJ，因为她在ESG圈中闻名，是在机构投资会议和可持续发展事件的常见演讲者，我们最近要求她查明major issues and trends that are shaping the ESG discussion那and how they inform and impact her firm’s engagement with companies.

Companies are increasingly more predisposed to reach out to us as shareowners, and are clearly interested in having our feedback on everything from executive compensation to supply chain monitoring programs to environmental initiatives.他们也更积极地与我们见面。而不是我们的分析师制定讨论和寻求回应，管理团队征求我们对相关ESG主题的看法。从去年脱颖而出的一些例子是我们与家庭驻车和价格的参与，我们为披露和报告的最佳做法提供了指导。

在过去的一年里,我们已经注意到公司ESG guidance from our analysts with greater frequency.通常，这与我们拥有并长期订婚的公司发生这种情况，例如Trex;在某些方面，它是持续，有意义的参与的自然结果。但在汇总，我们正在看到一些拐点的东西。多年来，由于影响投资者，我们将我们的大部分精力致力于说服它使其使他们感到讨论这些材料的股权问题。现在很多人都在做自己的吻合，并在我们上次离开主题的地方捡起来。

We have seen some progress – although much remains to be done – in companies acknowledging the value of gender diversity in the workplace。On boards of directors, among the C-suites, among management,我们的许多公司都承认了性别多样性的好处 - 以及思维的多样性– and that there is a real struggle for talent. In some cases, companies are beginning the promotion and training of women to create a talent pipeline that will add value down the road. This trend follows conversations between our analysts and our portfolio companies in which, being told at times they were suffering from a lack of available female talent for positions, we’ve asked what companies are doing to create that talent. As we have observed in academic and sell-side quantitative research studies over the past decade, companies with high gender diversity in the workforce and in senior management have delivered higher return on equity, higher return on assets, greater innovation, and lower volatility than companies with low gender diversity.

Carbon continues to be a key issue, and we’ve noticed an overdue awareness that climate risk affects the longevity of all sectors。建立有用的普遍标准仍然是一个挑战，因为迅速的范式和术语转变。例如，多年前，讨论是搁浅的资产。现在，不同报告标准和议定书的优势为投资者挑战，他们关注碳的投资者，但在报告标准讨论中没有启动。这些标准和协议对某些程度来说是周到和有用的，但它们的数量和复杂性有时可以使他们普遍存在决策驱动因素中难以使用。作为我们努力的一部分，除了跟踪我们投资组合的碳强度相对于相应的市场基准，我们还与我们的投资风险负责人进行了初步讨论，这对保留我们的投资团队对我们的碳风险接触的重要性战略控股。

There continues to be a lot of activity on establishing frameworks and standards for ESG reporting and measuring ESG impact, but it is difficult to tell the progress being made.组织正在工作 - 有时在一起，有时候 - 建立公司的协议。同时，公司在努力达到几个竞争协议时，不容易发现清晰度和可行性。

联合国可持续发展目标（SDGS）为私营部门提供了一种方式，以支持和解决我们所有人都会影响我们的各种迫切问题。但是，我们没有通过SDG定义我们的投资过程。Instead, we consider the SDGs as a way to provide broader context to the analytical work we do at the individual company level. On top of being valid and effective, this approach of tying our ESG and investment analysis to the underlying targets of the SDGs enables us to do something now.

Our analysts are at the heart of our ESG integration and engagement efforts and our portfolio management teams also play a vital role在讨论ESG问题和考虑公司商业模式和战略中的这些问题的价值。With the growth of interest in international ESG strategies, we are pleased to have seen progress in formalizing our engagement process with non-U.S. companies. Our international growth and value teams are beginning discussions with companies a little further afield than developed equity markets and these are unusual engagements.

We are also seeing further development of our engagements with small-cap companies. Given the coverage of small-cap companies in ClearBridge portfolios, small-cap engagements are uniquely important.They represent for us the next generation of company engagements, both because as small-caps they do not typically have the coverage larger companies routinely get, and because we have a chance to cultivate relationships and nurture ESG practices at companies from the ground up, like we have done in our discussions with small-cap beverage maker Cott. Ideally, by the time these companies become mid- or large- caps, they will have integrated sustainability practices. We also tend to have more influence with small-cap companies, because they are often looking for guidance as they are still in their adaptive phase.

ESG is often spoken of in broad or poorly defined terms, but theMSCI研究报告的作者“ESG趋势观看：2019”指出投资者应该利息投资者及其资产管理人员的一些特定领域。这里有一些非常有用的报告的一些亮点，您可以下载这里。

Plastic waste:与2017年相比，2018年收益召唤的概率增加了340％;当使用自然语言加工技术分析MSCI USA IMI的2,450个组成部分的监管申报（截至2018年12月），它确定了多达12个可能暴露于恶臭垃圾的12个相关行业，包括农产品和办公服务和用品。这些部门的公司可能会寻找解决方案，为获胜者提供开放。包装创新，如可生物降解，纤维的可再生包装或纸张，可能会进一步发展，以满足风险公司的需求。已经是集装箱和包装行业的公司收入的收入，其中大部分收入来自创新的纸质包装解决方案。

Regulatory implications for investors:投资者，资产所有者和资产管理人员都将看到随着监管机构加速审查，以重点关注ESG投资的业务。机构投资亚博赞助欧冠者是否准备好了？从历史上看，投资者一般都欢迎目标发行人的监管和准规定措施，因为大多数这些法规导致他们的投资组合公司的数据披露和透明度。事实上，一些机构投资者积极寻亚博赞助欧冠求监管机构的权衡 - 通过2018年10月的投资者主导的努力，以便向美国证券交易委员会提出申请，以便编纂关于ESG披露的规则。与220个全球机构投资者的Ernst＆Young调查发现了70％想要的监管机构，以缩亚博赞助欧冠小发行人披露的差距以及在ESG数据方面披露的投资者。在2018年提出的170多种监管或准规范措施中，其中80％的目标是机构投资者，而不是发行人。亚博赞助欧冠全球投资者是否能够支持这些措施，与对发行人的人所做的那样，可能依赖于监管和投资者。

气候变化时间表：In the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of global warming, one line among many might give investors pause: “Transition challenges as well as identified trade-offs can be reduced if global emissions peak before 2030 and marked emissions reductions compared to today are already achieved by 2030.” If not, according to the authors of the IPCC report, by 2040, the atmosphere’s temperature will have risen by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), inundating coastlines and intensifying drought, poverty and subsequent migration.

这是一个发现，融合科学和投资的时间范围 - 并将投资者放在2019年的投资拨款，有时需要占加速碳转型，或加速气候相关的影响完成薪水。

The signals revolution:从ESG数据中提取的信号不是一个目标，而是一个目标。对于一些投资者来说，核心目标是确定新出现的风险和机遇，并最大限度地提高长期投资回报。对于其他人来说，它是识别积极的社会或环境影响，或匹配与道德价值的投资。并非所有标签为“ESG”的“ESG评级”或其他排名旨在实现相同的目标，也没有同样有效地实现其特定目标。不同的方法导致不相关的信号。

Leadership in a time of transparency:行政套件和市场之间的墙壁的解体，政府甚至员工在潜在的声誉损害中不仅暴露了企业领导 - 它还将投资者开启了新的漏洞，因为公司经过最佳启示录制后公司被摇动后被摇动或最糟糕的非法活动。

But in 2019, The MSCI authors anticipate investors will stop asking after a scandal, “What did the board know, and when did they know it?” and start asking before a scandal hits, “What are my rights as shareholders?” Investors are starting to insist that, while the parade of CEOs behaving badly may be difficult to predict and avoid, replacing them and cleaning house in the wake of a scandal should not be.

以下观点来自资本基金管理（CFM）总裁Philippe Jordan。为了他对ESG投资的全部见解，到这里。

很明显，ESG数据显示安全选择的最大障碍，（可能）最具商业机会。ESG也适合当代思维，即传统指标可以（并且应该）在形成更全面的牢固风险和价值观方面增加了非传统数据。

The story of ESG is in large part the story of alternative data, with the unstructured nature of data an opportunity for systematic quant investors being uniquely positioned to uncover and discern between what information could be alpha generating or not. As it stands, managers could either tap into the vast choice of commercially available data sources (while being cognizant of the hazards of this approach), or employ their own skill to scrutinize alternative data. This will, either way, imply a cost to those managers willing to make an investment in this research.

然而，这是明确的，许多对冲基金仍然毫不常常开始这种努力。未消渊的一项调查显示，欧洲基于对冲基金的一半以上的对冲基金不愿意集成，而近70％的基于美国对冲基金。

缺乏兴趣的主要担忧是联合国ease about the quality of data. That data should be improved is a widely agreed objective, advocated by the finance industry and non-governmental organizations. A few organizations are making strides into setting the pace for data quality and comparability. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which helps companies identify climate-related risks, is one. There are, furthermore, various policy initiatives driving an increase in corporate disclosures related to ESG issues. According to the Governance & Accountability Institute, 85% of S&P 500 Companies published some form of sustainability report in 2017. This is up from the 20% that published these types of report in 2011, despite different levels of transparency.

There are claims that machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence are enabling better analysis of ESG data. Despite the benefits and opportunities this presents in a systematic framework, this claim should be met with some caution. Machine learning is not always uniquely positioned to tackle all problems in finance. A最近的论文由Arnott等人。突出显示机器学习的“关键限制”之一，即“数据可用性”，因为当存在大量数据时，机器学习应用程序最佳工作。虽然可以涉及像ESG的问题的数据量增加，但是一个容易受到过度装备和发现与不相关的数据的虚假关系或材料。

经常被ESG投资实践的另一个障碍是对影响公司的材料ESG问题的理解有限。如果他们真正致力于ESG投资，公司很可能会分配更多资源和专业知识。

Learn more about the what, why, and decisively, the how of ESG investing from a quant perspective.