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Newsletter

Source: Governance & Accountability Institute

Sustainability-Highlights-Header
September 16, 2010

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From across the nation and around the world, INSIGHTS-edge brings you news, commentary and research in key areas of interest regarding ESG, Sovereign Wealth Funds and US Public Sector Pension Funds.  We watch the watchers...who are watching you.

ESG / Sustainability

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Investment Recommendations
(Source: Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School) Security analysts are increasingly awarding more favorable ratings to firms with corporate socially responsible (CSR) strategies, according to this paper by Ioannis Ioannou and HBS professor George Serafeim. Their work explores how CSR strategies can affect value creation in public equity markets through analyst recommendations. Key concepts include…

More standardised ESG disclosure to benefit investors
(Source: Money Management – au) The next big step in environmental, social and governance (ESG) research needs to be the standardisation of data and disclosure, according to a panel of ESG experts. In an open forum at this week’s Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) conference, experts agreed that as much standardisation of disclosure as possible from large companies in terms of ESG data would make a huge difference to the provision of information, benefitting investors and research providers.

Semi-Annual Changes to the NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index
(Source: Trading Markets) The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NDAQ | PowerRating) and Clean Edge, Inc. announced today the results of the semi-annual evaluation of the NASDAQ(R) Clean Edge(R) Green Energy Index (Nasdaq: CELS | PowerRating), which will become effective prior to market open on Monday, September 20, 2010.

<p<strong>ESG factors make inroads in fixed-income portfolios
(Source: Responsible Investor) Bond managers are working to add environmental, social and governance factors to their investment processes to meet growing client demand for responsible fixed-income investments. The trend, at an early stage of development, is furthest advanced among large, sophisticated investors in Europe and North America. Managers that have taken strides to incorporate ESG factors into investment processes include Aviva Investors, AXA Investment Managers and Schroder Investment Management Ltd., while pension and sovereign wealth funds that have pledged to do so…

 

Sovereign Wealth Funds

Nigeria: Govt Submits Sovereign Wealth Fund Bill to National Assembly
(Source: AllAfrica.com) Lagos — The Federal Government has submitted the bill to give legal backing to the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) to the National Assembly. President Goodluck Jonathan said yesterday in Abuja at a meeting with honorary foreign investment advisers that the government was committed to creating the environment for the take-off of the Fund.

Norway's Oil Fund Says Volatility Is Good as Crisis Rewards Risk Strategy
(Source: Bloomberg) Norway’s sovereign wealth fund said it’s taking advantage of volatility to generate better returns as Europe’s largest equity investor adds risk. “If you look at what has happened during the financial crisis, a fund like ours actually came through it quite well and that to some extent increased our risk capacity and our risk willingness,” Yngve Slyngstad, head of Norges Bank Investment Management, said yesterday in a Bloomberg Television interview. “In a 30-year horizon you are actually paid for taking volatility; volatility for us is actually a good thing.”

Will Greece Turn To China And The Middle East For Salvation?
(Source: Business Insider) An interesting editorial in Greek newspaper the Kathimirini offers three ways for the country to avoid a debt restructuring… Third, Greece should try to convince sovereign wealth funds to buy a considerable chunk of its new bonds when they are issued. It is positive that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund stated it is a buyer in Greek bonds because it does not believe the country will default on its debt but this is not enough.

 

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Coming Soon…


We are in the process of upgrading INSIGHTS-edge, including the addition of many more profiles, identification of ESG critical issues of importance to corporations and investors, adding to the toolbox (twitter, customized email alerts and more). You will see the 2.0 version soon. And, we are rebranding the platform to better identify the focus of our efforts SustainabilityHQTM
will be here Fall,, 2010.

For more on:

ESG & Sustainability Players
- Shaping Perceptions, Valuations & Decision-Making

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs)
- State-Owned Global Investors

US Public Employee Pension Funds / Investors 
- State and Municipal Retirement Funds

Asset Managers
- Investors adopting ESG guidelines/policies & shaping market trends

 

Leading the way to
Sustainability...

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Please credit the source if quoted.

US Public Sector Pension Funds

CalPERS must release documents detailing $100 million investment loss
(Source: Mercury News.com) San Francisco -- A judge on Tuesday ordered the mammoth pension fund for state government workers, CalPERS, to release documents detailing how it lost $100 million in a failed East Palo Alto real estate development. The amount of public money involved clearly tilted the matter to disclosure, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard wrote in a six-page decision.

A look at state pension changes
(Source: AP) Highlights of changes to state government pension plans that affect current retirees and employees, and how much unfunded pension and non-pension retirement liabilities — such as retiree health care costs — each state faced as of 2008, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States.

Defending the Middle-Class: Why We Need Unions, Pensions, and Public Employees
(Source: Bob Samuels, The Huffington Post) Politicians and media pundits have joined the conservative effort to demonize unions, pensions, and public employees. In fact, if you landed on the planet today, you would think that the global financial meltdown was caused by greedy unionized public employees. Instead of blaming the super-wealthy for their huge gambling losses, there is a growing consensus claiming that the working poor and the downsized middle class are the cause of all of our problems.

The Politics of Fraud: How Pension Politics Enable Money Managers To Commit Fraud
(Source: Edward Siedle, Forbes) “If an enhanced due diligence service were available to pensions which would indicate whether their money managers were involved in fraudulent or illegal activity, would they be interested?” That was the question I recently put to the director of one of the nation’s largest public funds. The answer I received was, ” I don’t know whether pensions would run to or from such a service.”

Watching the Watchers

Enhanced Analytics Initiative
Established: 2004

KEY PARTNERS
Merged with United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI) in December 2008. The EAI site lists four partners: Ceres, PIRC, Keith Ambachtsheer, and Rob Arnott. Entities must apply to be EAI partners.

OVERVIEW/MISSION
Enhanced Analytics Initiative (EAI) defines its purpose in brief as: “The EAI is an international collaboration between asset owners and asset managers aimed at encouraging better investment research.”

EAI is a membership organization for investors and asset managers. It focuses on extra-financial issues (EFIs) rather than taking a strict socially responsible investing (SRI) approach to asset management.

 

Insights-edge Highlights is prepared by the Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc. Click here for more information on the Governance & Accountability Institute’s INSIGHTS-edge resources.   

Governance & Accountability Institute is a monitoring, intelligence-gathering and knowledge management center operating at the intersections of powerful forces reshaping relationship between stockholders and stakeholders, and the public corporation. For more information, contact us at 646.430.8230 or info@ga-institute.com.