The most prevalent minimum employee benefits that are offered by multinational companies are employee assistance programs and life insurance (73 per cent), maternity leave (70 per cent) and paternity leave (69 per cent), according to a new survey by Aon. The survey, which polled nearly 300 employers from across 31 countries, found these standard offerings […]
The Competition Bureau is speeding up the development of guidance on the interpretation of new provisions in the Competition Act aimed at greenwashing. The federal watchdog said it has received a large number of requests and that it will develop guidance “on an accelerated basis.” Read: Head to Head: Is it time to change the terminology […]
It would be possible to get around a city if there were no agreed-upon street names, but it would take longer, people would get lost and international travellers might just give the place a pass. The same could be said of investors trying to navigate where to put the many trillions of dollars that are […]
The United Nations’ Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance — an association of financial organizations that includes the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — is incorporating intermediary environmental targets as it continues its push to net-zero emissions by 2050. In addition to the new environmental reporting targets for asset owners, the association’s guidance now includes […]
The Pension Investment Association of Canada supports closely aligning the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board disclosure standards with the International Sustainability Standards Board’s requirements but recommends it only make necessary Canadian-specific modifications to the guidance. In an open letter to the CSSB, the PIAC noted alignment between financial and sustainability reporting supports “a connectivity that is essential […]
Active ownership, accompanied by a concrete set of stewardship goals, is critical for long-term value creation, said Delaney Greig, director of investor stewardship at the University Pension Plan, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2024 Global Investment Conference in April. The UPP, which was established in 2021 as a jointly sponsored defined benefit pension […]
Driven by the net-zero pledge towards green investments, institutional investors are finding themselves uncomfortably wedged between a rock and a hard place. If they invest exclusively in green assets and earn lower returns than the broader stock market benchmark, as was the case in 2023 for environmental, social and governance funds, they’re criticized for underperforming. […]
Greenhushing — the withholding of sustainability milestones and other environmental investment goals by institutional investors and investee companies — is a trend that could already be on the way out, says Mary Jane McQuillen, head of environmental, social and governance investing at ClearBridge Investments, a subsidiary of Franklin Templeton Investments. The effects of greenhushing are expected […]
The Independent Electricity System Operator’s pension plan is in the midst of a comeback from a period of heightened post-coronavirus pandemic volatility, with diversification as the key to its investment roadmap, says Jeannette Briggs, the organization’s director of corporate finance and who served as chair of its pension management committee from 2021 to 2023. After […]
Environmental, social and governance standards have helped investors generate positive annualized returns, with environmental investments leading the pack globally, according to a new study from Amundi Asset Management. The study reviewed the annualized financial returns of long-short portfolios designed with a broad ESG theme and a more specialized approach in North America, Europe, China, India, […]