AB launches new low-carbon strategy
AllianceBernstein has launched an Australian equities strategy, AM Managed Volatility Equities – Green (Green MVE) which aims for low-carbon investing.
The new strategy would be based on the AB Managed Volatility Equities Fund which puts a greater focus on exploiting the typically low-carbon characteristics of many low-volatility stocks.
The new strategy grabbed the attention of the Myer Foundation and the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) which provided an investment commitment of up to $50 million.
“It’s a strategy that combines significant innovations in terms of low-carbon investing with a tried and tested underlying low-volatility investment approach which has been very successful since inception,” said AllianceBernstein’s chief investment officer―Australian equities, Roy Maslen.
The innovations would aim at carbon neutrality by constructing a portfolio with emissions 90 per cent lower than the index and an arrangement to offset the remaining emissions through the retirement of carbon credits.
“We’re offering these environmental objectives together with the investment characteristics of the AB Managed Volatility Equities Fund, which we launched in Australia in April 2014,” he said.
“Since then, the fund has outperformed the index by 4.1 per cent a year,” it said.
The chart below compares the performance of the AB Managed Volatility Equities Fund and the Australian Equities sector since the fund’s inception.
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