Oikocredit USA Profiles Trillium's Community Impact Investing Portfolio
Oikocredit USA, the United States arm of Oikocredit, a worldwide financial institution that promotes global justice by empowering disadvantaged people with credit, recently ran a profile of Trillium’s Community Impact Investing portfolio. “’All we’ve ever done is environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing,’ says Randy Rice of Trillium Asset Management. ‘In our community impact investing portfolio we are focused on helping our clients achieve a high social return combined with a modest financial return.’ To achieve that goal, he helps clients invest in domestic and international loan funds, and Oikocredit has been in the portfolio for a long time. In …
Trillium's Q2 2012 Market Commentary
In hindsight it seems our outlook three months ago was too sanguine about both US job growth and the ever-simmering troubles in Europe. Both overtook the headlines during the second quarter and at one point pulled down the S&P 500 a full 10% from its early April peak—thus qualifying as an official market “correction.” As valid as investor concerns may have been, it’s also worth recalling that the S&P was up 30% from October of last year to the April high of this year. Some digestive backing and filling was in order. Despite those concerns, the market rallied off its …
Ceres: Shareholder Resolutions Spur U.S. Companies to Act on Sustainability During 2012 Proxy Season
Ceres, a U.S.-based nonprofit co-founded by Trillium Asset Management, which advocates for corporate sustainability leadership, recently released its wrap-up of the 2012 Proxy season. The July 10, 2012 press release states, in part: “During the 2012 proxy voting season, investors successfully used shareholder resolutions to spur action on corporate sustainability challenges such as climate change, hydraulic fracturing and supply chain and water availability risks. Of the nearly 110 resolutions tracked by Ceres in 2012, 44 proposals resulted in U.S. companies making commitments to tackle environmental and social risks in their operations and supply chains.” “…In 2012, investors continued to focus …
CFO Magazine: Show Us the Talent
Currently, most public companies do not have a consistent, standardized, method to communicate with shareholders and other stakeholders about the financial value of their human capital assets. The Society for Human Resource Management has recently proposed a Standard for corporate disclosure of human-capital that includes the reporting of employee salaries, benefits and taxes; number of full-time equivalents and total headcount; spending on employee support; spending in lieu of employees; and training and development as well as employee retention and leadership pipeline. CFO Magazine published an article about the proposed Standards. David McCann writes, “Keith Mills, an equity analyst at Trillium …
WealthManagement.com: Protect the Environment – Invest in REITS
WealthManagement.com recently published an article that explores the question of whether real estate investment trusts (REITs) deserve a place in a Sustainable and Responsible Investing portfolio. Jennifer Popovec writes, “Many property owners report that commercial buildings with energy efficiency ratings command significantly higher rents, boast higher occupancy rates, and achieve higher sale prices compared to conventional buildings. Likewise, a number of apartment REITs indicate that today’s renter is increasingly interested in living in communities that are “environmentally conscious.” ‘We have observed that the payback from doing green, environmentally focused activities is pretty high in real estate versus other industries,’ says …
Institutional Investor: Institutional Investors Demand Disclosure on Companies’ Political Spending
Institutional Investor recently published an article about the growing number of investors who are pressing companies to disclose their political spending and Trillium’s shareholder proposals which requests that companies refrain from spending money from the corporate treasury for political purpose. Katie Gilbert writes, “Some investors say that requiring disclosure may not go far enough; companies need to altogether exit from political spending that’s funded straight out of the corporate treasury, they insist. This proxy season, socially responsible investment firm Trillium Asset Management filed the first shareholder proposal by an institutional investor that asks a company to completely refrain from channeling funds from …
Trillium Launches Growth and Income Strategy
Responding to increasing calls for a higher dividend equity product, Trillium formally launched a dedicated Growth and Income Strategy in January. This product targets higher dividend paying companies to increase the income generation of the portfolio, while still investing in companies with strong environmental, social, and governance profiles. As a category, income-focused equity products have generated considerable attention in recent years as a solution to three common problems faced by baby boomers: a low interest rate environment where bonds are not providing the income of years’ past a volatile market where many investors favor concrete dividends over uncertain appreciation a …
GreenMoney Journal: The Next 20 Years of SRI
GreenMoney Journal’s 20th Anniversary issue includes an article by Cheryl Smith, entitled The Next 20 Years of SRI. “Over the past 20 years, U.S. assets invested using a Sustainable and Responsible Investing (SRI) framework have increased five-fold, from $639 billion in 1995 to over $3 trillion in 2010 according to the Trends Report from the US SIF. Concomitantly, institutional investors worldwide now recognize the efficacy and legitimacy of the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in investment analysis”, Ms. Smith writes. The complete article can be read here. …
MSN Money: Shareholder Spring? Protesters Roil Annual Meetings
The Fiscal Times/MSN Money recently ran a story on how shareholders and protesters are paying more attention to annual shareholder meetings. “ In Charlotte, city officials braced themselves for the biggest turnout of protesters yet, as Bank of America held its own annual meeting Wednesday and hundreds of protesters gathered outside the banks’ headquarters.”, writes Suzanne McGee. “To a growing number of investors, the definition of acting in the best interests of a company’s shareholders is changing, slowly but steadily, as is that of what constitutes an acceptable return on their investment. It’s no longer enough to generate outsize returns …
Citizens Groups Rally Behind Trillium, Green Century Resolutions
We’re willing to bet that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn’t often draw picketers, but on March 26, a group organized under the banner of the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending (or CAPS)1 stood outside the SEC’s normally quiet offices and demanded the swift implementation of a proposal requiring publicly traded companies to disclose details of the agency’s political spending. Two weeks earlier, at a press conference broadcast on C-Span, a coalition of citizens groups2 announced plans to transform this year’s stockholder meetings into a “shareholder spring” of protest against corporate involvement in politics. Bob Edgar, president of …
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