UK fund pushes oil, mining firms to be more green
Date: 29-Jul-03
Country: UK
Insight Investment, which manages 64.6 billion pounds ($104.9 billion) in assets as the fund arm of British bank HBOS Plc , said it had written to 20 companies asking for details of what they do to protect sensitive sites.
It was also launching a programme to help companies understand what investors expected to see from them.
The fund firm said it was concerned that utilities and so-called extractive companies - oil, gas, mining and mineral businesses - would be cut off from future access to natural resources if they did not now show respect for biodiversity.
"Insight believes that extractive companies that do not manage biodiversity effectively are exposed to business risks: liabilities, damage to reputation, increased costs, as well as difficulties accessing land," it said in a statement.
Noting that its own research showed that 45 percent of such companies made no more than passing reference to biodiversity in their public documents, Insight said it had launched a programme to work with companies to define goals and implement them.
"The aim is to reduce the harm to biodiversity to negligible levels and encourage companies to offset this through a positive contribution to conservation at extractive sites," it said.
"Such measures will ensure continued long-term access to sites and reduced liabilities, business and reputational risk."
Insight has been among the British fund industry's more vocal advocates of good governance in its corporate investments, but generally chooses to work with firms for what it sees as improvements rather than to shun investing in them.
Its general view is that companies that can successfully manage ethical, environmental and social problems associated with their businesses are likely to thrive.
