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洞悉萬變 可持續投資

Perspectives d'investissement | 播客 - 10:25 MIN

焦點對談 — 盡責管理:令人信服的實力

Daniel Morris
2 作者 - Perspectives d'investissement
15/05/2023 · 4 分鐘閱讀

我們代表客戶擔任所投資公司的盡責管理人,以鼓勵企業改善管治並提升其財務、環境和社會表現。

法國巴黎資產管理的盡責管理意味著,透過與所投資公司就其業務的可持續發展和長期表現的相關議題進行互動合作,以行使我們作為股東的權利。這些議題一般包括企業管治、盡職審查、行政人員薪酬和整體業務策略。

請收聽法國巴黎資產管理亞太區盡責管理主管Michael Herskovich與首席市場策略師Daniel Morris的焦點對談podcast,當中探討盡責管理在我們的資產管理中所發揮的作用。

您亦可以在YouTube上收聽和訂閱焦點對談(Talking Heads)。

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閱讀文字記錄

This is an edited transcript of the audio recording of this Talking heads podcast.

Daniel Morris:

Hello, and welcome to the BNP Paribas Asset Management Talking Heads podcast. Every week, Talking Heads will bring you in-depth insights and analysis through the lens of sustainability on the topics that really matter to investors. In this episode, we’ll be discussing stewardship. I’m Daniel Morris, Chief Market Strategist, and I’m joined by Michael Herskovich, Global Head of Stewardship. Welcome, Michael, and thanks for joining me.

Michael Herskovich:

Thanks, Daniel, and great to be here.

DM: To start us off, perhaps you could just explain to us what stewardship means, particularly for an asset manager.

MH: Stewardship is about using our investment and influence with companies and policymakers to contribute to a low carbon, environmental sustainability, an inclusive economy. We use different tools. Voting is a major stewardship tool because it involves exercising your rights and responsibility as a shareholder to vote at annual general meetings. The second tool is what we call engagement. How do we proactively engage with issuers – not only of equities but also of bonds – with the aim of improving their performance in terms of their approach to sustainability or governance? This is the second pillar of engagement. And the final way we define stewardship relates to public policy: How do we engage with regulators and policymakers to shape the markets in which we invest and the rules that guide and govern company behaviour? So that is the framework of our engagement strategy: Voting, engagement and public policy.

DM: Can you explain BNP Paribas Asset Management’s approach to voting and give us some of the key figures over the last year?

MH: Well, we vote on average at 2 000 general meetings a year. The full details and the figures are in the Sustainability Report we have just published. It is important to point out our level of opposition. We are an engaged investor. We do not hesitate to vote against [investee companies’] management proposals and we opposed one proposal out of three – a 33% opposition rate – which has been part of the DNA of our strategy because when you vote against a proposal, you’re sending a strong message for the company to change its approach and to adopt our policy and our guidelines.

If we look more closely at our opposition, when you vote at a general meeting, it can be about board elections, electing a director to serve on the board, or on financial operations, or on executive compensation. They are the three most common topics when you vote and where our opposition rate is the highest, including 60% opposition on executive compensation.

We also incorporate more and more environmental and social aspects in the way we vote at AGMs. We expect transparency from companies on their [greenhouse gas] emissions, but also transparency on their strategies, their commitment to reaching net zero by 2050. Last year, we also incorporated biodiversity elements, especially transparency on water and forestry strategies of companies in sectors that are key in terms of biodiversity.

Another dimension to voting is shareholder resolutions. As a shareholder, we have a right to submit our own proposals, We have done this especially as an escalation process when we have not had the engagement or results that we were expecting. We have a lot of support on shareholder proposals, especially when they help to improve the environmental and social dimension.

DM: Another key pillar you mentioned was engagement. What’s the main focus for BNP Paribas Asset Management and how you go about it?

MH: In our engagement with companies, we focus on our global sustainability strategy, which centres around the energy transition, environmental sustainability and equality and inclusive growth. So our engagement is thematically based on the key elements that will impact the strategy and the long-term performance of the company. We engage with companies and issuers based on their their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. We to seek to engage with companies that have low scores on ESG or that have some improvements to make.

We engage individually on behalf of BNP Paribas Asset Management, going to our main holdings and having discussions as an investor with those companies. But we are also increasingly working collectively with other investors because collective engagement has greater leverage due to the greater weight of capital invested in the company. We have been doing that for a long time, but it has become a growing trend in recent years. In our industry we are seeing more and more new initiatives. We were recently involved in the launch of Net Action 100, which is a collective initiative on biodiversity that you can find out more about on our website. And we have been an active member of Climate Action 100+ for a long time. All of this is about tackling [investee] companies’ climate change and net zero challenges. We are playing a key role in the collective initiatives of the industry to try to push companies to improve their sustainability practices.

DM: Michael, thank you very much for joining me.

MH: Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure.

This is an edited version of a discussion on current market events and is not intended as investment advice or an offer of products or services by BNP Paribas Asset Management. Please keep in mind that the information and analysis in this presentation is only current as of the publication date.

免責聲明

文章可能包含專業術語,並不適合非專業投資經驗使用。 本資料中的觀點和意見乃是作者於文章出版日期發表,以公開資料為基礎,並可予更改而毋須通知。個別投資組合管理團隊可能持有不同的觀點,並可能為不同客戶作出不同的投資決策。本資料並不構成投資建議。 投資價值及其收益可升亦可跌,投資者可能無法取回最初的投資金額。過往表現並非未來回報的保證。 投資於新興市場、專門或受限制行業,波幅可能高於平均水平,因為這類投資的集中程度較高,亦因可提供的資訊較少而帶來較高不確定性,而且流動性較低,或對市況(社會、政治及經濟狀況)變動的敏感度較高。 相比國際大部份已發展市場,若干新興市場提供的保障較少。因此,代表投資於新興市場的基金提供投資組合交易、平倉及保本服務或附帶較大風險。
環境、社會及管治(ESG)投資風險:歐盟未有就納入ESG及可持續發展標準制定共同或統一的定義及標籤,可能令基金經理在訂立ESG目標時採取不同的策略。此亦意味著可能難以比較納入ESG及可持續發展標準的策略,因為用於物色投資的篩選條件及比重可能基於具有相同名稱但具有不同潛在含義的指標。根據ESG及可持續發展準則評估證券時,投資經理亦可使用外部ESG研究供應商所提供的數據來源。鑑於ESG的性質不斷發展,這些數據來源可能暫時不完整、不準確或未能提供。在投資流程應用負責任商業行為標準,可能令若干發行人的證券被排除。因此,子基金的表現可能不時優於或遜於未有應用上述標準的同類基金。

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