Superannuation fund, Christian Super has announced the appointment of Ethical Partners Funds Management, an independent boutique with funds under management (FUM) of $1.6 billion, for its Australian equities mandate.
The fund, which ethically screened all of its investments since 2006, said that Ethical Partners FM’s focus on ethical considerations as a core part of the investment process was an important factor in manager selection.
“We are delighted to be working closely with an organisation with which we share similar core values. We both aim to provide investors with good returns over the long term by investing in an ethical way,” Nathan Parkin, investment director of Ethical Partners, said.
“By focusing on the companies with the best practises when it comes to knowing where their products came from, who made them and what impact they had on the planet, we believe we are lowering risk.
“We generally have more confidence investing in companies that are ahead of the pack with respect to sustainability issues.”
Ethical Partners’ investment process focused on an assessment of the cash flow, balance sheet, management, social, environmental, country and industry risks for individual companies, the firm said.
“Our team has applied our investment process across more than 200 companies, which has involved assessing almost 3,000 individual data points and undertaking over 350 company meetings in the past year,” Parkin said.
Economic growth was weaker than expected, once again highlighting an economy largely sustained by population growth and government spending.
In this latest edition, Anna Shelley, CIO at AMP, shares the fund’s approach to current market conditions and where it continues to uncover key opportunities.
The mega fund has announced a $2.2 billion investment in a leading data centre platform, bringing its global real assets portfolio to nearly $60 billion.
In this latest edition, Australian Retirement Trust’s head of global real assets Michael Weaver explains the fund’s approach to finding new opportunities as it surpasses $300 billion in funds under management.