With sustainable investing under pressure in an increasingly volatile global context, many of the events of the past quarter show that it’s never been more important to rely on the strong foundation of sticking to clear principles in support of a long-term view.
In this edition of our quarterly Sustainable Investment Review, we are pleased to feature a perspective on taking principled approach to investment, expressed by our Chief Investment Officer Dagfin Norum. Interviewed by Nordsip’s Economics Editor Felipe Albuquerque, Norum lays out a clear case for why and how sustainability is integrated into our fiduciary duty
As we noted in our special focus on mitigating conflict risk in the Q1 2025 edition of this publication, the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of several that is raging on, resulting in a horrific level of violations of human rights of civilians. With this has arisen for investors a vastly heightened risk of potential links to these violations. We therefore provide in our section on active ownership, a further status update on our ongoing assessments of conflict risk in our portfolios.
Still on the theme of a principled approach, the global challenge of transitioning to a net-zero economy requires that investors demand consistency in the actions of the companies they invest in, including how they engage with policymakers. Following a long process of engagement, we unfortunately came to the conclusion in the past quarter that Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, was not sufficiently transparent about contradictions between the commitments communicated in its net zero plans, and the direction of its climate lobby activities. As a consequence, we excluded Toyota from investment and divested in our stake in the company.
Detailed descriptions of these cases, and more, including data on our engagement and voting activity, are available to explore in this issue.
Read the full report here