GlebeAsset Management has released a revised ethical investment charter, outlining its future direction in regard to socially responsible investment (SRI).
The new charter will see Glebe place a positive screen over potential investment opportunities for the first time, allowing it to specifically seek out companies with good socially responsible records.
The positive screen will focus on corporate governance issues, looking at companies with coherent codes of ethics, clearly defined procedures for registering directors’ interests, wide-ranging risk management practices and comprehensive guidelines that ensure thorough audit procedures.
Glebe will also maintain its traditional negative screen, which filters out investments in companies with interests in areas such as gambling, tobacco, alcohol, pornography, armaments and uranium mining.
“Nothing is going to change in terms of our immediate investment position, as the new charter outlines the direction that we have been heading in anyway,” Glebe Asset Management’s Paul Harding-Davis says.
“What we are doing is articulating more clearly the value that we place on organisations who fulfil positive criteria rather than just focusing on the negatives.”
The charter also outlines how Glebe will move forward towards ‘engagement’ with organisations, entering into dialogue with companies who have questionable ethics in order to influence their conduct directly and create win-win outcomes.
“Engagement comes into the picture when we like a company from an investment perspective but take issue with some of their practices. We would talk to management about certain aspects of behaviour and show them how it is in their interest to change in order to increase shareholders and enhance share performance,” Harding-Davis says.
However, Harding-Davis admits that meaningful engagement will be difficult to achieve while SRI remains in a fledgling state in Australia, as the bargaining power of groups like Glebe is linked directly to the amount of SRI funds they hold under management.
Glebe currently has more than $600 million under management and oversees the investment portfolios of the Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney.
