Our Approach
We engage with companies to improve their business practices and apply criteria to our entire endowment that rules out sectors and companies with a poor environmental, social and governance track records to avoid investing in companies whose products and corporate behaviour conflict with our mission.With our investments, we aim to:
We monitor our investments closely and hold ourselves and our asset managers accountable for implementing our mission-aligned investment strategy in line with our rigorous sustainability guidelines.
Shareholder Engagement
In 2018, we partnered with Swiss asset management firm de Pury Pictet Turrettini (PPT) to launch the CADMOS Peace Investment Fund. This applied an assessment methodology co-developed by PeaceNexus to invest in companies with a net positive contribution in fragile states. Our engagement philosophy and processes were recognized by the PRI and in 2019, the Fund was shortlisted for the PRI awards in the category “Active Ownership Project of the Year”.
Since the Fund’s launch, we have held over 100 engagement meetings with companies, many of which have taken action on our recommendations and are partnering with us to strengthen their positive impact in fragile states.
Our focus engagement topics include:
Our experience showed that European companies were particularly receptive to engaging with peace topics. To grow the Fund’s size and impact, in 2022 the Peace Fund will be merged with the CADMOS European Fund to expand the peace-focused engagement to a broader set of European portfolio companies. Building on past experience, it will streamline ESG and peace assessment methodologies and bring in additional partners to engage with the expanded portfolio of European companies.
The constructive accompaniment and conflict-sensitivity expertise of PeaceNexus is important in further advancing our priorities in conflict-affected countries.
Peter Nestor, Head of Ethics at Novartis
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