Our dedicated Sustainable Equities team manages a range of strategies that integrate material sustainability factors with a rigorous fundamental investment process. We actively look for companies that appear attractively valued and can benefit from secular themes, such as energy and water conservation, health care, demographics and other long-term trends.
The Sustainable Equities team manages the Long-Term Themes Fund, a strategy launched in 2016 in partnership with UBS WM. Population growth, urbanization and an ageing society are global and inexorable trends that continue to reshape society and the economy. Given the persistence of these trends, the Chief Investment Officer of UBS WM has identified 19 enduring long term investment themes connected to the mega trends such as water scarcity and oncology. The UBS Long Term Themes Equity Fund invests in companies that have solutions to the challenges these trends represent to our societies.
The Sustainable Equities team is working with scientists from the City University of New York and Harvard University to develop methodologies to measure the impact of public companies on society and the environment on four selected themes: climate, water, food security & health. These themes touch on multiple UN SDGs, e.g. clean water and sanitation, clean energy, health and well-being, climate action and life on land. These models rely on publicly available data from companies, regulators and scientific publications along with UBS AM analytical resources. Partnering with academics is core to UBS Asset Management's philosophy to identify robust, credible and user-friendly impact metrics. Our research partnership also includes a key pension fund client. We are leveraging this research for the stock selection and management of the Global Impact Equity Strategy, launched in October 2017.