Growing inflationary pressures and the impact of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine all contributed to a difficult period for most financial markets in the first half of the year.
Against this backdrop, we review the performance and positioning of the SDG Engagement High Yield Credit strategy as well as its progress towards key engagement objectives, including:
- 111 companies engaged – 87% of the annual target – with over two objectives per company on average across our portfolio of 128 holdings.
- 297 engagement actions: 173 governance, 117 environmental, 83 social and ethical, 90 strategy, risk, communications.
We believe that companies in our strategy have the potential to benefit society and the environment – and that their key challenge is to develop clean, future-resilient and more equitable next-generation industries and value chains.
As our progress over the first half of the year illustrates, engagement works best when we are empowered to foster genuine, frank two-way dialogue with companies over years, not in single instances.
A stable and programmatic approach to engager-company relationships contributes to the ease of access we now enjoy with management teams and boards, almost three years since the launch of our fund.
Other highlights include:
- Case studies: Multiple examples of how engagement has worked in practice and how companies in our portfolio have responded.
- Engagement themes: An overview of the 12 broad areas in which we engage and why they matter.
- Understanding scoring: Our six-factor heuristic framework for SDG ex-ante scoring explained.
To find out more, read the full 2022 H1 report.