Discover how momentum around investor engagement built throughout the early 2000s.
The launch of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2006 was a pivotal moment for building momentum around investor engagement. F&C Investments, now a part of BMO GAM, was one of the founding signatories. Although the Principles provided a helpful investment stewardship framework, investors needed to improve their understanding of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and their impact on companies’ performance to be able to fulfil their signatory commitments. We led and participated in various collaborations aimed at helping investors understand ESG issues whilst setting best practice standards.
BMO Global Asset Management’s voting, engagement and public policy work is conducted independently of the wider BMO Financial Group. Positions taken by BMO Global Asset Management may not be representative of the views of the BMO Financial Group as a whole or of the other lines of business within it.
All of our investment plans involve a level of risk and the value of your investments can go down as well as up. The level of risk will depend upon the underlying investments that you choose to hold in the plans. You need to be comfortable that you may not get back the original amount invested.
Alice Evans, Director and Co-Head of the Responsible Investment Team, discusses the early years of fund management and the evolution to focus on investing responsibly.
Our early ESG collaborations
Climate Change
Business conduct
Environmental stewardship
Human rights
“These Principles grew out of the understanding that while finance fuels the global economy, investment decision-making does not sufficiently reflect environmental, social and corporate governance considerations – or put another way, the tenets of sustainable development.”
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, Press PRI press release, 2006
In the aftermath of the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis, fingers were pointed at banks and regulators, but also at shareholders – why did investors not do more to challenge weak governance structures and excessive risk-taking? The crisis promoted many investors revisit their approach to stewardship, which helped further build momentum around investor engagement. Emboldened, they sought to play a key role afterwards by holding financial institutions to account and pressing for long-lasting improvements in governance and culture.
During 2007-8, we conducted in-depth engagement with over 20 global financial institutions to promote changes in culture and management behaviour. This included RBS, Barclays and HSBC. Meanwhile, the 2008 proxy season saw us actively exercise our voting rights on all bank holdings. We engaged with many of the UK, European and US banks most deeply involved in the crisis before the vote to explain our expectations and opposed poor governance practices where appropriate. We also supported all resolutions calling for a “say on pay” at the large US banks.
Kalina Lazarova, Analyst in our Responsible Investment Team, focuses on the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the impact it had on ESG in the financial services sector.
