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00 Table of contents Introduction SAM Sustainable Asset Management - key facts Dow Jones Sustainability Index - key facts Q&A Occupational Health & Safety.

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Presentation on theme: "00 Table of contents Introduction SAM Sustainable Asset Management - key facts Dow Jones Sustainability Index - key facts Q&A Occupational Health & Safety."— Presentation transcript:

1 00 Table of contents Introduction SAM Sustainable Asset Management - key facts Dow Jones Sustainability Index - key facts Q&A Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) SAM’s current assessment framework Q&A Future plans for OH&S criteria Conclusions & discussion

2 11 SAM Sustainable Asset Management - key facts Asset management firm focused on ‘sustainability investing’, founded in 1995 in Zurich. Two broad categories of investment products for public equities: 1.‘Global & regional strategies’  invest in ‘sustainable companies’ 2.‘Thematic strategies’ (e.g. water, renewable energy, …)  invest in companies that provide solutions Developed the methodology that was selected by Dow Jones to create the first sustainability index in 1999 - the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI). As of June 30th 2011, SAM had some EUR 5.5bn of assets under management, and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index had licensees managing approx. EUR 5.8bn of assets. Part of the Robeco since 2006, which itself is owned by Dutch-based Rabobank (AAA rated). Roughly 100 employees headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, 20+ of which in Research. Three main areas of expertise: 1.Sustainable development & corporate sustainability 2.Financial valuation & portfolio management 3.Technical expertise in certain niches (e.g. clean energy technologies, water technologies, …)

3 22 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) - key facts Every year, SAM invites the largest 2’500 companies worldwide to participate to its annual corporate sustainability assessment (based on free-float market capitalization as of Dec. 31st of the previous year). Assessment framework: online questionnaire, covering a broad range of general and industry- specific assessment criteria (governance, environmental, and social criteria). Complemented by a review of what external stakeholders are saying about the company (referred to as ‘media & stakeholder analysis’). The number of companies that participate to this assessment has grown steadily since inception (750 in 2011, up from 280 in 1999). Firms that decline to participate are assessed on the basis on publicly-available information. Index construction based on ‘best-in-class’ approach for each sector (58 sectors based on ICB level 3, as defined by Dow Jones). Full guidebooks available here.here Assessment process audited by independent third-party audit firm (Deloitte) A report entitled Rate the Raters (Oct. 2010) by SustainAbility provides an insightful analysis of 100+ rating organizationsRate the Raters

4 33 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) - Q&A What is the purpose of the DJSI? To create a family of indices that track the stock price performance of ‘sustainability leaders’ in their respective market sectors. How do we identify ‘sustainability leaders’? Questionnaire-based assessment framework, aiming to benchmark individual companies against best-practices for a broad range of general and industry-specific criteria. What is SAM’s ‘Use of Information’ policy? The information provided by companies is treated as strictly confidential. That information is used to compute scores that form the basis for the index construction process and for SAM’s internal asset management activities.  Neither the underlying information nor the scores that are calculated on the back of this data are given or sold to any third parties.

5 44 Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) - Q&A How do we communicate with participating companies? What information and feedback do we provide to them? Companies are always free to contact the analyst responsible for their sector or our helpline. What information and feedback do we provide to them? - The questionnaire itself is like a blueprint of corporate sustainability best-practices for a given sector - Companies receive a quantitative summary of their results, and how that relates to the average performance in their sector - Companies can decide to order a more detailed feedback, including a full gap-analysis of where the firm stands vs. best-practices, via our Sustainability Services department (this service is provided for a fee).

6 55 OH&S - SAM’s current assessment framework The OH&S assessment framework is somewhat different for each of the sectors we assess, and includes a combination of the following elements: OH&S as a criteria features in 45 of the 58 sectors analyzed. The average weight for the OH&S criteria for all sectors is 6.3%. The lowest weight is 2% for sectors such as media, telecoms; and the highest weight is 12% for sectors such as oil & gas, and mining. Key issues with current assessment framework include: Lack of a common assessment framework for OH&S. Bottom-up approach leads to too many duplicates & inconsistencies (e.g. LTIFR vs. TRIFR) Overly focused on OH&S performance, perhaps neglects other aspects of OH&S (policies, systems & procedures, training, …)  Doesn’t do a good enough job at distinguishing firms that truly excel at OH&S from the rest.

7 66 Future plans for OH&S criteria Having just taken over the OH&S criteria at SAM, a general review & consultation with participating companies will soon be underway. So far, it appears that there are clear areas for improvement in: 1.Acquiring a better understanding of what aspects of OH&S are material in various sectors 2.Establishing a common assessment framework for OH&S, which can then be tailored for each sector in view of the specific elements that are deemed material. Such a common framework could be organized around 4 main building blocks: OH&S Policy OH&S Systems & procedures OH&S Training & consultations OH&S Performance 3.Revisiting the assessment scheme behind new OH&S criteria to ensure that it manages to better differentiate companies.  Christophe to draft a new set of questions in the coming weeks. Would you be interested in being part of a review panel?


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