LaSalle Investment Management (LaSalle) is a real estate investment manager investing in private and public property equity investments on behalf of pension funds, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, other institutional investors and high net worth individuals. LaSalle is part of the Jones Lang LaSalle group (NYSE:JLL) a global professional and financial services firm in the real estate sector. At year-end 2017, LaSalle had investments in a diverse set of property types (Office, Retail, Industrial, Multifamily and Hotels) and in private and public real estate companies across 17 countries worldwide. Additionally, we have a growing real estate debt placement platform. Our business activities organize in the three major Regions: Asia Pacific, Europe and North America; except for our public equity busines, which operates globally.
As a fiduciary to our clients, LaSalle's primary responsibility in all of its activities is to deliver superior investment results for them. We believe that environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance (ESG) best practices can enhance the performance of our clients' investments. LaSalle's operating philosophy with respect to ESG is to set policy and strategy at the global level and empower the regional and local teams to develop initiatives and priorities appropriate for each country, client, and asset. In 2016, LaSalle made two significant strides further prioritizing ESG in our operations:
- We established a three year strategic plan, laying out three primary strategic goals for 2016-2018 and acting as a guiding framework for implementation our Regional Sustainability Officers utilize in working with each of our regional businesses.
- We hired a Global Head of Sustainability, who will lead our Global Sustainability Committee in the achievement of the goals set out in the three year strategic plan.
We also believe in staying active within the industry on ESG issues. Through engagement with our peers and industry initiatives, as a collective, we've helped industry organizations focus on ESG for the real estate sector. Our work has moved the industry towards tracking consistent, comparable and quality ESG metrics.
Globally, LaSalle Investment Management is committed to the following Guiding Principles:
- Reduce the environmental impacts of our business operations, in conjunction with our parent company Jones Lang LaSalle.
- Reduce the environmental impacts of our clients' properties and monitor the effects of climate change on those properties;
- Deliver the best solutions to our clients through meeting and/or exceeding the requirements of environmental laws and regulations;
- Drive thought leadership and innovation on sustainable property investments; and
- Collaborate with clients, tenants, property managers and other service providers to ensure the best sustainable solution to the management of properties while maximizing investment performance.