ESG
We believe that the quality of corporate governance practices, and how companies manage the environmental and social aspects of their operations, can be material to delivering superior longer-term shareholder value. In acknowledging the importance of ESG issues and given that they may not have been a central focus in financial markets historically, we are committed to making the assessment of ESG factors an explicit part of our research process and have established a dedicated research stream for ESG. Specifically, this research stream is designed to focus on several aspects relating to ESG:
- Attempting to identify and validate ESG alpha factors that improve the returns of our strategies
- Attempting to identify and validate ESG risk factors that improve the risk of our strategies
- Exploring potential ESG-focused products using existing strategies we manage
- Ongoing search for new ESG and alternative datasets that may aid the above research
The team also employs a proxy voting policy to add value and protect clients’ interests as stakeholders. We believe that quantitative portfolio managers should dedicate their time and effort to managing portfolios and conducting investment strategy research, rather than conducting research in connection with the voting of proxies. As such, an independent third party, Institutional Shareholder Services, has been engaged to provide research and recommendations for when to vote against resolutions.