Railpen leads bondholder stewardship group

Railpen chairs Bondholder Stewardship Working Group

Railpen senior investment manager Chandra Gopinathan is the chair of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change’s new Bondholder Stewardship Working Group, which is targeting improved governance for bondholders. Made up of nine core investors with combined assets under management of £2.6tn – including Insight Investment, Phoenix Group and Royal London Asset Management – the group has been founded in response to a recognised absence of bondholder-specific stewardship guidance. It will focus on building guidance and best practice standards on green financing for bondholders.

BlackRock DC default strategy targets 50% cut in carbon emissions intensity

BlackRock announced that its £9.2bn LifePath UK investment strategy has incorporated a climate objective and other sustainability goals into its fund prospectus. Its goals include reducing by half its carbon emissions intensity by sales over a 10-year period starting from July 2019. It also wants to invest at least 80 per cent of its assets held in corporate issuers in ESG-screened strategies, and the same proportion of assets held in sovereign issues in strategies with ESG sovereign rates of at least BB.

PRI launches new global standard for stewardship resourcing

Principles for Responsible Investment has teamed up with the Thinking Ahead Institute as part of an initiative that will attempt to identify the appropriate amount of resources used by institutional investors for stewardship. It will conduct a benchmarking study and include examples of best practice by asset managers and owners, and will also propose a calculation method for setting the appropriate levels of resources that investors should use for stewardship.