It is good to see guidelines being developed to enable environmental and social considerations to be consistently applied beyond project finance to wider investment activities. The Equator Principles have clearly paved way for broader changes to working practices in the financial sector, as they have demonstrated that these techniques can provide an effective means of responding to shareholder concerns over the environmental and social implications of finance decisions, and can thereby enhancing the value of shares in a company.
Fifty investment funds managing $4 trillion of assets have signed up to the UN’s Principles of Responsible Investment, a set of six guidelines intended to provide mainstream investors with a framework to integrate environmental, social and governance considerations into investment decisions.
“We are proud to endorse the Principles, which recognize that social and environmental issues can be material to the financial outlook of a company and therefore to the value of our shares in that company,” said Denise Nappier, Treasurer of the State of Connecticut.
