11. Can long-term investors afford to invest without considering ESG?

Companies, and their shareholders, are facing increasing levels of scrutiny from the media, activists and the public for the impact they have on the environment and society. As we consider many of the recent headline-grabbing corporate failures, it becomes clear that companies that fail to consider and manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors often prove to be poor investments and destroy shareholder value over the long term. In conversation with Nshalati Hlungwane, a manager in the Institutional Clients team, ESG analyst Raine Adams and governance analyst Nicole Hamman separate the fundamentals from the fads, as they explain our approach to investing with ESG in mind. They also detail many of the steps we take as stewards of our clients’ capital to ensure that we are acting responsibly and holding companies to account.