Multimedia Presentation Recorded 04 Aug 2020
ESG and Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World
Overview
Corporate exposure to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors can materially affect companies — learn to manage investment risk by integrating ESG considerations into portfolios and engaging with companies to make them more sustainable.
Does the increased interest in ESG investing shown by institutional and private wealth clients mean that we are at the inflection point for a structural change in the way investors allocate resources? The growth in ESG assets under management make it important to understand the trends and driving forces behind ESG investing, particularly as it pertains to risk management. This webinar with Professor Pedro Matos will explore the substantial body of research on ESG investing, discussing how these insights can create win–win scenarios for portfolio managers and their clients. He will also discuss whether investors have the data and metrics they need for ESG integration, examine how institutional investors around the world implement ESG strategies, and look at whether investors are “walking the ESG talk.”
Professor Matos will draw conclusions from the body of academic evidence presented in his CFA Institute Research Foundation publication, ESG and Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World: A Critical Review. He will also discuss how some of these considerations are accelerating in response to COVID-19.
This is an archived recording of a live webinar that took place on 4 August 2020.
About the Speaker(s)
Pedro Matos is the academic director of the Richard A. Mayo Center for Asset Management, holds the John G. Macfarlane Family Chair in Business Administration, and is a professor of business administration (finance) at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. His research focuses on the growing importance of institutional investors in financial markets worldwide. Professor Matos’s work has been published in top academic journals and featured in such publications as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fortune, and Forbes. He is a research associate at the European Corporate Governance Institute and a member of the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment’s Academic Network Advisory Committee. Professor Matos’s work has received numerous research grants and awards. He has won the Wells Fargo Awards for Excellence in Course Material Development and for Outstanding Research Publication and the Darden Multiyear Publications Award. Previously, Professor Matos taught at the USC Marshall School of Business, where he received a Golden Apple teaching award, and he has worked with the Portuguese Ministry of Finance and consulted for the World Bank. He holds a BA in economics from NOVA University Lisbon and a PhD in finance from INSEAD.
Monika Freyman, CFA, is the head of responsible investment for Canada at Mercer. Her focus is to drive the creation of solutions and implementable responsible investment consulting advice to address market needs expressed by companies, pension plans, and participants across the country. She has worked in the financial services industry in both fixed income and equity analysis. Ms. Freyman currently advises CFA Institute on how to embed more ESG content into their financial analyst seminars and is a standing author for the CFA Institute Enterprising Investor Series. For the past decade, she has been a leader in responsible investing including projects with Harvard’s Kennedy School and Trillium Asset Management. More recently she was a Director with Ceres, a sustainability research and advocacy enterprise. There she created and led the Ceres’ Investor Water Hub, a working group of over 120 global pension funds and managers, working to evolve ESG and water integration approaches. She also worked with Ceres’ investor network including the Global Climate Action 100+ initiative. She was lead author of the Ceres Investor Water Toolkit, a how-to guide on water integration practices in portfolio management, in collaboration with 40 institutional investors. With a background both in finance and science, she enjoys bridging knowledge and ideas between these two fields.
Ms. Freyman holds a bachelor of commerce in finance from University of British Columbia, a master of science from Loyola University Chicago and is a National Science Foundation Award Winner.