ESG roundup: Hermes EOS, Finance tomorrow AXA IM, Principles, London UKSIF Vigeo
GLOBAL - The short-term solution in business and finance lies in greater control over their most important means, such as fund managers, investment banks and panels, by Colin Melvin, Director General of Hermes Equity Ownership Services (Hermes EOS).
He told the audience of the series of conferences on the future of finance in London: "From the perspective of pension funds, this may well designed mandates that will better achieve the interests of the agent with the directors, as defined in the International Corporate Governance Network, proposed among others.
"We also need a better management of assets through land ownership and collaborative participation asset owners such as pension funds heard."
Melvin said that despite progress in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) and the increase in the number of signatories to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), in short-term business and financial markets was still a problem.
Short-term value and can destroy recruiting incentives to invest, research and develop new products for the long-term include, he said.
The fundamental problem of the capitalist system is the control and detection of agents rather than principals, he added.
"The big problem of executive compensation and the reason for this failure is that the current policy was largely of agents, conducted fund managers as agents for the real owners of companies such as pension funds and many of these fund managers are not interested in [long-term] , "Melvin said.
"Many indicators favor the sense in the context of their own performance goals., This led in totally inadequate structures for most of the companies involved."
Melvin said he had seen an increase in the pension business adoption sustainability practices of their business partners responsible its own policies during the past 18 months, investment, including pension funds Unilever, RBS, Shell M & S, BT and ING.
In other news, AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) is separated from agricultural raw materials.
Matt Christensen, Global Head of Responsible Investment at AXA IM, told IPE: "All AXA Investment portfolios are owned and performed in the process of selling food.
"And there will be no new purchases of agricultural commodities in the future.
"We could not find a good reason to keep the soft commodities in our portfolio if it is not certain that the soft commodities given to the pricing of food speculation.
"Although AXA IM has no opinion either way, we were not ready to add to the controversy. - In other words, it was based on a defensive argument"
AXA IM already includes cluster munitions and landmines from its investments and blacklists of a handful of countries.
The London Principles, a set of guidelines to governments consider impact investing as a tool to achieve social goals, were launched at the third annual conference of the Political effects Investing Collaborative (NRC) in London.
They do not dictate what the government should do, but guidelines that show the ideal case, a better strategy and policy.
The principles are drawn from a variety of political, economic and cultural contexts and are designed to suitable at various locations throughout the stages of development of the ecosystem effects of different investors.
The five principles of London are clarity of purpose, commitment of stakeholders, market management, institutional capacity and complete transparency.
They were developed by IFCI with policy makers, scientists and other stakeholders and are now open for consultation.
Meanwhile, the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF) has co-signed a letter to the Treasury Select Committee requesting an investigation of the main reasons economists Treasury apparently blocked a comprehensive review of government in resource scarcity, climate change and the prospects for growth in the UK.
Simon Howard, UKSIF CEO, said: "Investors and companies take risks to take this seriously, so if a government review has been stopped, in fact, we deserve a clear explanation as to why."
Other key signatories include Aviva Investors, Climate Change Capital, The Co-operative Asset Management, First State Investments, Impax Asset Management Group, Triodos Bank WHEB Group, Aldersgate Group and Friends of the Earth.
And almost three-quarters view SRI / ESG for stock prices, according to the survey for Sustainable Development in 2013 Thomson Reuters Extel / UKSIF & SRI.
More than 80% of buy-side sees as an important thematic research into SRI / ESG, while the oil companies are considered late to meet the needs of SRI investors.
The 2013 survey represents the views of more than 500 investment professionals from 29 countries.
It reflects a contribution of 215 buy-side firms and 26 brokerage firms / research houses.
Finally, the rating agency Vigeo warned its investor clients reputational risk and law firms in the violation of the privacy of the customers, for companies such as Apple, AOL, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Paltalk, Skype accused (Microsoft), Twitter, Yahoo! and YouTube (has Google) are possible secret access to their server to get approved by a monitoring program of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama accused of user data.
Verizon Telecom was also unveiled client records to the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of a court order alleged top-secret.
Benseddik Fouad, director of institutional relations and methods of Vigeo, said: "This case shows that serious corporate responsibility to prevent the violation of human rights and the rights of corporate customer privacy is not just a question in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic countries.
"Companies should have the right to know their customers and at least inform them of their clear and understandable communication to observe and be monitored by the public way."
Given the importance of the charge of breach of confidentiality, the recurrence of such events for the company and due diligence measures involved apparently not taken to prevent violations of the right to privacy, the ratings Vigeo lowered all companies in its pilot sustainable development rights category.