ESG & Sustainability

Stocks tumbled last month, posting their weakest showing since March 2020 and the worst January since 2016, as investors assessed the potential impact of higher US interest rates.

It appears onerous and sometimes confusing, but the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) aims to enhance and protect participation in sustainable investments — a cause well worth the trouble.

Aligning portfolios with the UN Sustainable Development Goals is a fast-growing segment of responsible investing (RI), one with a different profile and outcome to ESG or climate considerations. A recent webinar explored how investors can employ the SDGs for portfolio management, index construction, reporting and more, using the Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform (SDI AOP).

We talk to Paul Lacroix, Ossiam’s Head of Structuring, about the switch of index underlying the Ossiam STOXX® Europe 600 Equal Weight NR ETF, and why an equal-weighted ESG strategy can boost both the ESG profile and price returns of a portfolio.

Fund issuers seeking to design sustainable-investment products to be distributed across European markets face an uphill struggle because of widely diverging national and regional frameworks. A new Qontigo whitepaper highlights the intricacy of Europe’s ESG labeling landscape and provides some recommendations that may help overcome its pitfalls.

The list of sustainable investment (SI) frameworks guiding portfolio design is long and keeps growing. Rarely a day goes by without intense discussion of some or all of them, and their often-conflicting implications for fund design. The authors of this paper aim to contribute towards this intensifying debate by examining in detail (as of October 2021) the criteria used in the 12 most important European pieces of legislation, country-specific fund labels and other standards guiding SI product design.

Stocks rose in December and wrapped their third consecutive year of double-digit gains, as fears of economic disruption stemming from the Omicron coronavirus variant abated.

The idDAX 50 ESG NR Decrement 4.0% can be used to underlie structured products offering exposure to sustainability leaders in the German equity market. The decrement mechanism allows issuers to improve the coupon or capital-protection terms offered to clients.

How can investors push companies to have a more positive societal impact from their products and operations? And how can that impact be measured? Responsible Investor and Qontigo host a panel of experts who discuss these topics and more.

Variety in ESG data can enrich investment strategies and provide an edge in performance. Qontigo’s open-architecture approach is to find and leverage the most robust sustainability information available, with no limitation to any single provider, for each investing case.

Stocks fell in November, with indices reverting gains in the month’s last three sessions, as the emergence of the Omicron variant raised concerns the COVID-19 pandemic may continue to undermine the global economy.

Rebecca Chesworth, Senior Equities Strategist at State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs; and Hamish Seegopaul, Head of R&D for ESG and Quantitative Indices at Qontigo, discuss the change in underlying index for the SPDR® STOXX Europe 600 ESG Screened UCITS ETF and how clients’ ESG needs are shaping the product offering.