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Key Takeaways

• "Sustainable funds’ assets under management (AUM) reached a record $4.13 trillion at the end of December 2025, up 4.0% from June, but their share of total global fund assets declined to 6.5%, as traditional funds saw stronger flows.
• Sustainable funds recorded net outflows of $86.4 billion in 2H 2025, more than offsetting inflows earlier in the year. Europe-domiciled sustainable funds recorded outflows for the first time, although much of this was driven by reallocations to bespoke mandates.
• Sustainable funds delivered median returns of 5.3% in 2H 2025, just below traditional funds at 5.5%. Sustainable funds outperformed in most regions, but differences in geographic exposure offset this overall."

… contains …

• Do you need to be radical to be heard?
• The absence of shareholder engagement: A strategic and financial risk?
• Engagement strategy 2025
• Narrative and quantitative report on engagement

Integrated report (financial + ESG), published in 2026 for FY2025.

Publication date: 3 March 2026

Contains:

• "Electrification is unstoppable"
• Iberdrola today
• Business model and strategy
• Human and social capital
• Ethics, transparency and good governance
• Nature and efficient use of resources
• Supply Chain

Integrated-style disclosure (financial + ESG), typical for APAC; includes emissions intensity, LNG exposure, and transition positioning.

… contains:

• Sustainability Report (voluntary)
• Sustainability Report (mandatory)
• Corporate Governance

SASB-aligned with operational ESG metrics (safety, emissions, governance).

Publication date: 20 March 2026

... covers:

• Governance
• Environment
• Social

Flagship climate/ESG update aligned with CSRD; includes detailed Scope 1–3 progress and transition strategy execution.

Publication date: 26 March 2026

"These results underscore once again the robustness of the Company’s integrated multi‑energy model and confirm the relevance of a strategy designed to combine growth in the energy supply, competitiveness, and emissions reduction."

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom is at the forefront of one of the most transformational periods in modern history. However, the rise of AI comes with an increasing demand for water to cool the energy-intensive data centers that power AI computations. As the water withdrawal required to quench global AI demand is expected to reach up to 6.6 billion cubic meters in 2027, and the UN predicts that nearly half of the world’s population will face the risk of serious water scarcity by 2040, many investors are paying closer attention to the sustainability risks associated with rising data center demand. 

This report highlights the key water risk trends associated with artificial intelligence usage, and assesses how companies in the Software & Services industry are currently managing their water risks. It also provides a case study on the Big 4 data center companies – Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft – assessing their relative performance as the market leaders in AI investment.

Markets respond differently to risk. So does portfolio performance.

Portfolio resilience, return potential, and purpose‑aligned priorities are not mutually exclusive.

Our latest research examines how different regions price risk, how investors can evaluate trade‑offs between resilience, returns, and sustainability, and how these dynamics shape portfolio construction with lasting performance implications.

Building on our 2025 analysis, we study stress‑tested US and EU equity market data across multiple major market shocks to demonstrate how portfolios perform under pressure—and why outcomes differ by market structure and regulatory environment.

Download the report to see how these risk signals can be applied across regions to strengthen portfolio resilience in any market.

As the energy transition reshapes markets, investors are seeking clearer ways to assess how transition risks and opportunities may affect portfolio outcomes. In this paper we analyzed more than 37,000 mutual funds and ETFs globally to examine whether transition characteristics were linked to financial performance.  

The results suggest they were. Between 2022 and 2025, higher fund Energy Transition Scores were associated with stronger returns, particularly among climate- and transition-focused funds.

A one-point increase was associated with +1.7% per year higher returns, rising to nearly +3% for climate and transition funds. Managing exposure to transition pressures — such as policy and technology risks — showed the strongest relationship with performance, while transition readiness was more closely tied to improved decarbonization outcomes.

Not all sustainability investments carry equal weight for corporate performance. For executives making the internal case, our analysis offers a clear takeaway: Companies that strongly managed their most financially material sustainability risks tended, over a 12-year study period, to run more stable and predictable businesses than peers that did not.

The finding draws on data from more than 13,500 companies. Controlling for size, sector and region, those in the top quintile of MSCI ESG Ratings showed consistently lower variability in both sales and cash flows than bottom-quintile peers — a difference significant at the 99% confidence level. The pattern held across 10 of 11 sectors, suggesting a structural rather than incidental relationship. 

The results are consistent with the logic underpinning MSCI’s ESG Ratings model, which identifies environmental and social risks that are industry-specific and financially material, rather than treating sustainability as a uniform set of obligations. A chemicals company, for example, faces a different risk profile from a retailer or a bank. 

In this episode

For years, biodiversity risk has been a blind spot for investors — difficult to measure and even harder to link to financial performance. But that’s starting to change. In this episode, we explore how more granular, location-based data is helping investors see where companies are truly exposed to nature-related risks. 

"Stewardship at Dimensional is a global effort to protect and enhance shareholder value through engagements, proxy voting, and advocacy. The Annual Stewardship Report details these initiatives.

... contains:

• Approach to Investment Stewardship
• Investment Stewardship Activities
• Voting and Engagement Case Studies
• Public Policy
• Appendix: Portfolio Companies Engaged in 2025

"As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown over the past few years, so have the energy needs of the data centers that power AI. In 2024, US data centers used approximately 200 terawatt-hours of electricity, about what it takes to power the country of Thailand for a year. And in 2025, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US increased by 2.4%, driven in part by the expansion of data centers for AI and the increased combustion of coal to keep up with the growth in electricity demand.

What does this mean for the carbon footprint of companies involved in AI? We sat down with Michael Gillenwater, the executive director, dean, and co-founder of the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute and a member of Dimensional’s network of ESG researchers and academics, to better understand the challenges of carbon accounting and the implications of widespread adoption of AI on companies’ carbon footprints.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, Gillenwater explains the basics of carbon accounting. In Part 2, we explore how the growth in energy usage by AI data centers will be reflected in a company’s carbon footprint."

Part 1

Part 2 

What will it take to price physical risk with confidence?

On November 10, 2025, in Toronto, CPP Investments Insights Institute convened an invitation-only discussion on the challenge of underwriting and pricing climate-related physical risk.

Building on Investing in a Changing World: How public funds are addressing climate-related physical risks, a recent report from the Institute, the event brought together investors, banks, insurers, reinsurers, and data and modelling providers from across Canada’s financial ecosystem.

In this panel discussion, participants compare approaches and surface practical tools currently in use across the market. They explore what “good” looks like in pricing physical risk, and the data, modelling, governance, and disclosure barriers that must be addressed to move the market forward.

Fruuit Consulting is proud to announce a short two-day series on ESG Ratings.

ESG ratings are no longer an ESG team topic.

They show up in investor conversations, influence which funds can hold you, and increasingly shape how your disclosures get read and trusted.

That is why Fruuit is running ESG Ratings Workshops this spring, built for Investor Relations, Sustainability, Compliance, and Reporting teams, taught by former MSCI and Sustainalytics professionals.

Two options, depending on where you sit:
✅ ESG Ratings 101 for junior and mid-level professionals
Covers the ESG ratings landscape, how to report effectively for ratings, and how corporates should engage raters.

✅ Advanced ESG Ratings for senior professionals
A deeper dive into how investors use ESG ratings to allocate capital, how ratings link to regulation (including IFRS and CSRD), plus industry breakout sessions for banking, mining, and oil and gas.

If your job touches external reporting, risk, compliance, or investor confidence, this is designed to make the ratings world feel legible and actionable, fast.

Dates:
May 27 and 28, 2026, 8:30 AM ET
June 10 and 11, 2026, 2:00 PM ET

Show the math: with different agendas, shareholder proposals want to know if Amazon can really achieve its 2040 net zero goal

Amazon has made bold commitments to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, which has seemingly united pro-ESG and anti-ESG groups in wanting to know if the company can really achieve this in the face of a massive data center build out. This is a question all shareholders may want more information on given Amazon’s potential $150 billion data center spend.

Environmentally-focused As You Sow and Mercy Investments and conservative National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) have each filed shareholder proposals on Amazon’s 2026 proxy that want to know if the Everything Store is really committed to keeping its climate pledge given the massive energy needs for its data center expansion. They come from different places but are ultimately asking the same thing.

Rules, risks, and the energy transition...

"What is the global state of play regarding climate and sustainability regs and their applicability for the energy transition?

In this episode, I talk with David Carlin, founder of D. A. Carlin and Company, the New York-based sustainability advisory firm, about the fast-evolving world of climate and sustainability regulation."

We explore what today’s regulatory landscape means for the energy transition and for businesses navigating increasing complexity:

• how policymakers are shaping more realistic and pragmatic rules
• how companies and investors are responding to shifting global regulations
• which sectors are undergoing the most significant transformation
• which reporting and risk frameworks matter today and what comes next

David also shares his Transition Tapes playlist - a selection of standout rock storytelling, along with a curated list of recommended books and films."

Listen via Spotify

Listen via Apple

"I often hear how we can’t afford to move to renewables because they are too expensive and need too many subsidies to be competitive. Well, have these critics thought about how much we subsidise natural gas and petrol?

A group of economists from the World Bank and IMF went into great detail to sum up all the explicit subsidies given to producers of fossil fuels across 170 countries. They calculate that explicit subsidies amount to $725bn worldwide or some 0.6% of global GDP. Meanwhile, they calculate that there are an additional $6.7 trillion (5.8% of global GDP) provided in implicit subsidies by not taking into account the damage fossil fuels cause to the environment and human health ... "

Asia Pacific insurers are entering a defining phase for portfolio construction. Regulatory frameworks across Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are tightening, sustainability commitments are accelerating, and global credit conditions continue to shift. In this environment, insurers must navigate an increasingly complex set of constraints without compromising the stability that fixed income portfolios are expected to provide.

Focal points

• The 13th edition of the Carbon Clean200™, released February 2026, ranks 200 publicly traded companies by sustainable revenues; collective revenues from clean-economy activities reached a record US$2.8 trillion in 2025 — up 12% year-on-year and 710% since 2017.
• The Clean200 has outperformed fossil fuel and broad market benchmarks over a 10-year horizon: US$10,000 invested on 1 July 2016 would have grown to US$38,290 by January 2026, versus US$21,100 for the MSCI ACWI/Energy fossil fuel benchmark.
• The 2026 list is concentrated in Asia-Pacific (36%), Europe (33%) and North America (26%); IT companies generate the largest share of sustainable revenue at US$782 billion, followed by Consumer Discretionary (US$649 billion) and Industrials (US$611 billion).

Contents

... includes ...

• Methodology: revenue-based selection criteria and exclusionary screens
• Performance analysis: Clean200 vs fossil fuel and broad market indices over 10 years
• Regional and sectoral distribution of the 2026 Clean200
• Top-ranked companies and sustainable revenue growth trends

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Sonnet 4.6 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Focal points

• ACGA identifies persistent governance shortcomings in the revised ¥18,800 tender offer for Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO), despite improvements including a positive Special Committee recommendation and voluntary alignment with the updated TSE code of corporate conduct.
• The majority-of-minority condition remains diluted in the updated tender offer documentation, and no active solicitation of competing bids was conducted — a passive approach to price discovery that ACGA considers inadequate for a transaction of this scale and governance significance.
• For global investors and governance reformers, the TICO transaction is framed as a referendum on the credibility of Japan’s corporate governance revolution — with the founding Toyoda family identified as the primary beneficiary of the deal structure.

Contents

... includes ...

• Revised tender offer terms and Special Committee recommendation
• Persistent governance concerns: majority-of-minority dilution and price discovery
• Japan corporate governance reform context and TICO’s significance
• Implications for minority shareholders and global investors

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Sonnet 4.6 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Pipeline contraction among large pharmaceutical companies undermines progress on antimicrobial resistance, even as pockets of innovation and supply chain improvements emerge.

Focal points

• The 2026 AMR Benchmark — assessing 25 pharmaceutical companies — identifies a 35% decline in antimicrobial pipeline candidates from large research-based companies since 2021, falling from 92 to 60 active candidates, with industry-wide efforts being outpaced by drug resistance.
• Despite pipeline contraction at large companies, SMEs are driving innovation for critical- and high-priority pathogens, and two recent FDA approvals — zoliflodacin and gepotidacin — mark the first new oral treatments for gonorrhea in decades.
• Critical access gaps persist: only five of 35 assessed projects are designed for children under five, and no assessed company has registered child-friendly antibiotic formulations in 17 sub-Saharan African countries where the AMR burden is highest.

Contents

... includes ...

• Pipeline analysis: large company contraction and SME innovation
• Supply chain compliance: antibiotic discharge standards
• Access gaps: child-friendly formulations and low- and middle-income countries
• Company performance rankings and sector-level findings

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Sonnet 4.6 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Sustainability skills are a top learning requirement for investment managers, according to CFA Institute’s conversations with talent development teams across the industry. 

The evolution of sustainable investing and the new opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) are driving demand for more sophisticated skillsets in investment management.

In discussions with CFA Institute’s business development team last year, employers told us that the skills related to all aspects of sustainability and climate investing were among their top learning requirements.

They are also among the most challenging. As highlighted by the organizations we spoke to, sustainability-related roles in finance today demand a complex combination of technical and human skills – as well as an ability to leverage AI for analytical power.

​The Environment and Sustainability recruitment market has started 2026 with steady, sustained activity.

Demand remains strong across construction, infrastructure, energy, and environmental services, driven by a continued shift from high‑level ESG strategy toward physical delivery.

Many organisations are now expanding their sustainability teams to support more mature programmes, meet regulatory expectations, and demonstrate real progress against net zero goals. As a result, hiring is particularly active at the mid‑senior level, where professionals are expected not only to advise but to lead, influence, and embed sustainability into day‑to‑day operations.

The Director of Communications provides senior strategic communications leadership for PRI, using communications as a deliberate lever to reinforce PRI’s value, credibility and coherence with signatories and external stakeholders. The role shapes the external narrative, protects and enhances reputation, and translates complex technical and policy work into clear, decision‑useful messages that strengthen the enabling environment for responsible investment.

Responsible Investment Manager, RI Markets - OCEANIA (Close 3 May)

Director, EMEA - RI Markets (Close 19 Apr)

12month Fixed Term Contract

IFM Investors is a global asset manager, founded and owned by pension funds, with capabilities in infrastructure equity and debt, private equity, private credit, real estate and listed equities. 

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity to work in ESG Reporting. There is an increasing drive to promote transparency and comparability of ESG reporting across organisations to support sustainable investment decisions and progressive agendas in this space.  This includes the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which is a new reporting requirement covering the full breadth of ESG with a large number of disclosure requirements alongside the EU Taxonomy which assesses the sustainability credentials of a company’s financials.

Job Title: ESG Credit Analyst

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: London

Working style: Hybrid 50% home/office based

Closing date: 13th April 2026

We have an opportunity for an ESG Credit Analyst to join the Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) Credit team on a permanent basis.

The role focuses on sustainable credit research and ESG integration across a range of sectors and offers opportunities for interaction with stakeholders across the wider business, as well as external clients and consultants.

You’ll join a collaborative and inclusive team, with significant opportunity for development and career progression.

New York, New York, United States • Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Sustainability Investments Manager - 
Purchase, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Plano, Texas

Within this role, you will be undertaking high-quality and insightful ESG research, risk advice, stewardship and other activities that make a decisive contribution to a range of asset classes and themes. By working with initiative and in collaboration with colleagues from across the business and at all levels, these actions help to secure members’ futures by identifying and managing the ESG risks and opportunities that matter most to financial outcomes for members. A key part of your role will be ensuring our ESG risk advice on public and private investments, both managed internally and by external asset managers, is evidence-based and impactful.

The team is looking for a dynamic, engaged professional to support cross-functional reporting initiatives and carbon reduction activities. The role includes supporting the operations and integration of the team and working with internal colleagues at all levels and external stakeholders to advance the team’s overall impact. This role is ideal for someone who excels at coordination, stakeholder communication, and process improvement.

The role is accountable for the implementation, ongoing development and effective delivery of the PPF’s Stewardship Strategy, supporting the management of investment risks through engagement and voting and contributing to the achievement of sustainable long-term investment return across the Fund.

This role offers a genuine opportunity for a candidate who is passionate about sustainability, climate change and the transformation of the investment industry in a way that is additive across the value chain for the business.

Employment Type Full time Please note, where PRI has an office there is an expectation to work a minimum of 2 days per week
Location Hybrid · Singapore
Team Markets
Seniority Senior
Closing: 11:59pm, 22nd Mar 2026 +08

As a Senior Sustainability Analyst, you will play a key role in advancing Broadridge’s sustainability strategy and driving progress toward near-term and long-term emissions reduction goals. In this role, you will lead the development of supplier engagement program and contribute to disclosures aligned with global sustainability frameworks. You will collaborate with internal stakeholders and external partners to deliver accurate insights, identify opportunities for improvement, and recommend strategies that drive meaningful progress toward Broadridge’s environmental commitments.