A fiduciary is a person who holds a legal or ethical relationship of trust with one or more other parties. Typically, a fiduciary prudently takes care of money or other assets for another person. One party, for example, a corporate trust company or the trust department of a bank, acts in a fiduciary capacity to another party, who, for example, has entrusted funds to the fiduciary for safekeeping or investment. Likewise, financial advisers, financial planners, and asset managers, including managers of pension plans, endowments, and other tax-exempt assets, are considered fiduciaries under applicable statutes and laws. In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust in another whose aid, advice, or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relation, good conscience requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the one who trusts.
A fiduciary is someone who has undertaken to act for and on behalf of another in a particular matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence.
Ping An Insurance known also as Ping An of China, full name Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. is a Chinese holding conglomerate whose subsidiaries provide insurance, banking, asset management, financial, healthcare services. The company was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Shenzhen. "Ping An" literally means "safe and well".
The Global Reporting Initiative is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.
Socially responsible investing (SRI), social investment, sustainable socially conscious, "green" or ethical investing, is any investment strategy which seeks to consider both financial return and social/environmental good to bring about social change regarded as positive by proponents. Socially responsible investments often constitute a small percentage of total funds invested by corporations and are riddled with obstacles.
Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) is a Pan-African private equity firm that has raised over US$2 billion through funds and co-investment vehicles for growth capital investing in Africa. Founded in 2000 under the leadership of Thomas Gibian, Hurley Doddy, Vincent Le Guennou, and Carolyn Campbell, ECP has over 20 years of investing experience on the continent and is one of the largest and longest-established private equity fund managers focused on Africa, with an investment team operating in three offices on the continent. In May 2007, when ECP closed its second fund with capital commitments of over US$520 million, the company became the first private equity group to raise over $1 billion for investment in Africa. ECP has made over 60 investments covering more than 44 African countries and has realized 48 full exits.
PGIM, Inc. (PGIM), formerly known as Prudential Investment Management, functions as the asset management arm of Prudential Financial, an American life insurance company.
Cowan v Scargill [1985] Ch 270 is an English trusts law case, concerning the scope of discretion of trustees to make investments for the benefit of their members. It held that trustees cannot ignore the financial interests of the beneficiaries.
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is a set of considerations, including environmental issues, social issues and corporate governance that can be considered in investing.
Robeco Schweiz is an international investment company with a specific focus on sustainability investments. It was founded in 1995 by Reto Ringger. The company is based in Zurich, Switzerland, and considers economic, environmental, and social criteria in its investment strategies. In addition to asset management, the company has an indexes and private equity portion of the business. In 2006 RobecoSAM introduced a division called sustainability services that provides sustainability benchmarking reports to companies. In 2001, the then-RobecoSAM became the first carbon neutral company in Switzerland.
The Stewardship Code is a part of UK company law concerning principles that institutional investors are expected to follow. It was first released in 2010 by the Financial Reporting Council ('FRC'), and in 2019 the FRC released an updated edition of the Stewardship Code.
GCM Grosvenor is an American alternative asset management firm, with approximately $76 billion in assets under management and approximately 530 professionals as of 2023.
Responsible Research Pte Ltd is an independent Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) research firm for global institutional asset owners and asset managers. Based in Singapore, Responsible Research analyses the ESG factors and regulatory landscapes that increasingly threaten portfolio returns in Asian markets.
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the global financial sector to catalyse action across the financial system to align economies with sustainable development. As the UN partner for the finance sector, they convene financial institutions on a voluntary basis to work together with them, and each other, to find practical solutions to overcome the many sustainability challenges facing the world today. UNEP FI does this by providing practical guidance and tools which support institutions in the finance sector to find ways to reshape their businesses and commit to targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, protecting nature, promoting a circular economy and supporting financial inclusion to address inequality. The solutions developed effectively form a blueprint for others in the finance sector to tackle similar challenges and evolve their businesses along a sustainable pathway. The creation and adoption of such a blueprint also informs policy makers concerned with sustainability issues about what would constitute appropriate regulation for the finance sector at large. Founded in 1992, UNEP FI was the first organisation to pioneer engagement with the finance sector around sustainability. The Finance Initiative was responsible for incubating the Principles for Responsible Investment and for the development and implementation of UNEP FI’s Principles for Responsible Banking and Principles for Sustainable Insurance as well as the UN-convened net-zero alliances. Today, UNEP FI provides sustainability leadership to more than 400 financial institutions, with assets of well over $80 trillion headquartered around the world.
Coronation Fund Managers is a South African third-party fund management company, headquartered in Cape Town. The company has locations in all South African major centers and offices in, Ireland, United Kingdom and in Namibia where it is represented by Namibia Asset Management a strategic partner. As of December 2019 the company had Assets under management of R578 billion.
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is a non-profit organization, founded in 2011 by Jean Rogers to develop sustainability accounting standards. Investors, lenders, insurance underwriters, and other providers of financial capital are increasingly attuned to the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors on the financial performance of companies, driving the need for standardized reporting of ESG data. Just as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have established International Financial Reporting Standards and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), respectively, which are currently used in the financial statements, SASB's stated mission “is to establish industry-specific disclosure standards across ESG topics that facilitate communication between companies and investors about financially material, decision-useful information. Such information should be relevant, reliable and comparable across companies on a global basis.”
RepRisk AG is an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) data science company based in Zurich, Switzerland, specializing in ESG and business-conduct risk research, and quantitative solutions.
Arabesque Partners is an Anglo-German investment management firm founded in 2013, with headquarters in London and a research hub in Frankfurt. The company offers a quantitative approach to sustainable investing.
ESG Quant is an investment strategy, developed by Arabesque Partners, which involves quantitative equity investing while utilizing ESG information, often referred to as "non-financial" information. ESG Quant strategies are implemented within systematic trading or quantitative trading approaches that leverage a large and growing collection of commercial ESG, alternative and non-profit or academic datasets. As such, there is no human judgment or discretionary buy-sell decision making; rather, “in a pure quant model the final decision to buy or sell is made by the model” or through the “utilization of an expert system that replicates previously captured actions of real traders.”
NN Investment Partners was a Netherlands-based asset manager, with headquarters in The Hague and offices in 15 countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas. The company was acquired by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the asset management division of Goldman Sachs in April 2022.
Sustainable finance is the set of financial regulations, standards, norms and products that pursue an environmental objective. It allows the financial system to connect with the economy and its populations by financing its agents while maintaining a growth objective. The long-standing concept was promoted with the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, which stipulates that parties must make "finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development." In addition, sustainable finance had already a key role to play in the European Green Deal and in other EU International agreements, but since the COVID-19 pandemic its role is even more important.
