This week, the Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform selected Qontigo as the exclusive distributor for SDI data following the launch of the Platform. Meanwhile, in Sweden, Alecta announced it has invested as much as €620 million in sustainable infrastructure since the beginning of 2020. The funds were channelled to these projects via Allianz European Infrastructure Fund, Antin Infrastructure Partners IV and a third fund, so far undisclosed.
Refinitiv launched an ESG scoring service covering investment funds. The new Refinitiv Lipper Fund ESG Scores’ goal is to disentangle the modalities of ESG integration from funds that focus only on exclusion to those “deep ESG integration”, and other levels in between.
On the corporate scene, the Nordic CEOs for a Sustainable Future, a group of some of the largest Nordic companies committed to integrating the UN SDGs, presented their sustainability demands to the Nordic Council of Ministers. Elsewhere, in a recent report, the FAIRR Initiative estimates that, if carbon taxes on farm animal emissions were to materialise into actual policy action, they could cost a set of 40 leading meat companies up to $11.6 billion of EBITDA by 2050.
While it may not be possible to answer the myriad of environmental, social and governance questions that arise from COVID-19, Aviva’s Steve Waygood and Rick Stathers look at whether COVID-19 will accelerate or decelerate progress and focus on ESG’s constituent parts, in an article published in Ekonamik‘s latest issue focused on the economic impact of the pandemic.
