(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
By Sachin Kumar | The Peninsula
Doha: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing has become a dominant theme globally. There is sharp growth in investors' commitment to ESG in the past few years, that is evident from the surge in flows of funds into ESG Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), said experts during webinar on ESG investing.
Qatar Stock Exchange organised a webinar yesterday titled 'ESG Investing is Here To Stay' in which experts underscored the importance of ESG in investment.
Delivering opening remarks Mohsin Mujtaba, Director PMD, Qatar Stock Exchange said that ESG investing is here to stay. There are 736 ESG ETFs globally benchmark various ESG indexes with Asset Under Management (AUM) of over $326bn of which $108bn have been invested this year, which is significantly higher than the total new asset flow of $88bn for the last year. In 2019 the total AUMs in the ESG ETFs were just $66bn.
Raman Aylur Subramanian, Managing Director at MSCI said that there is seismic shift happening in the attitude of investors globally around the topic of ESG and they have been seeing an impact of that on the pricing of asset and asset valuation which will result in relocation of the capital. He said, according to MSCI research, companies which are more resilient are highly rated on ESG characteristics are highly profitable and are less prone to systematic shock which leads to a large-scale improvement in valuation and stock prices.
He said that if you integrate ESG across the spectrum of the investment process, there is an opportunity to generate a large scale return by integrating ESG.
Ahmed Ali Al Hammadi, CIO – Europe, Russia and Turkey, Qatar Investment Authority shed light on the how QIA is integrating ESG in its investment process.“We are mandated to create long term value for the state and future generations, it means that sustainable investing has to be part of what we do,” he added. High quality companies are taking care of ESG mandates.
Delivering welcome remarks, Hussain Al Abdulla said that QSE is committed to advancing the ESG agenda.
Akber Khan, Senior Director, Al Rayan Investment shed light on synergy between Sharia based investing and ESG investing. He said that the greater focus on ESG has made it easier for him to explain about Sharia based investing.
Leo Chi Wai Tong, Head of Sustainability, QNB said elaborated on the importance of ESG. QNB has established a dedicated sustainability team, sustainability framework and a roadmap. Stephen Fisher, Managing Director, BlackRock explained about how the organisation advance sustainability at Blackrock.
Environmental, Social, and Governance are the three central factors that allow investors to measure the sustainability and societal impact of an investment in a company.
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