Essentially unheard of a decade ago, investing strategies that screen holdings for compliance to Environmental, Social and Governance values have captured increasing investor interest. Tony Campos, Head of Sustainable Investment, Americas, FTSE Russell, joins the podcast to explain how the process of ESG screening works at FTSE Russell. Not wanting to leave things purely academic, we go under the hood of the two largest ETFs that track FTSE Russell Indexes, Vanguard's ESG U.S. (ESGV) and International (VSGX) ETFs.
2:30 - Meet Tony Campos, Head of Sustainable Investment, Americas, FTSE Russell.
4:00 - What are the origins of ESG investing?
6:45 - The "E" in ESG: What does FTSE Russell look for in companies that have positive environmental characteristics?
10:00 - Is it safe to say that energy companies will not end up in ESG portfolios?
14:30 - The "S" in ESG: What does FTSE Russell look for when building the social part of these indexes?
19:00 - How is it that a company like Facebook (FB) is a top 5 weighting in FTSE Russell Index trackers like the Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF (ESGV)?
24:00 - The "G" in ESG: What's the governance piece even doing here?
29:00 - Tax transparency and corporate tax shelters
32:30 - How do you ensure the accuracy of the ratings data?
36:45 - How do you select and weight index components?
42:30 - Does ESG investing mean exchanging values for performance?
44:30 - On ESG beyond equities: Fixed income and beyond
46:45 - The U.S. is catching up to rest of the world in its adoption of ESG
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