Social Responsibility

WHAT SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTING MEANS TO US

For both social and investment reasons, we focus on well-managed companies with sustainable business practices capable of delivering worthwhile returns for a number of years. The securities that we manage are screened for a wide range of social criteria and are voted in a conscientious way. Our shareholder activism includes initiating company dialogues and co-filing shareholder resolutions on behalf of our clients.

In our opinion, the primary reason to apply screens and to engage in shareholder activism is to achieve improvements in companies’ behavior. We encourage our clients to provide us with positive and negative social screens.

Our default screens are detailed on the following pages and include:

• Endeavoring to avoid holdings in industries that are intrinsically unacceptable, like tobacco, weapons of war, handguns, and nuclear power plants.
• Trying to select sustainable companies based on how well they respect their stakeholders as well as the natural environment.

We carry out in-house primary research on environmental, social, and governance issues as well as employing third party social research services.  We involve ourselves in the activities of US SIF, collaborate with other socially responsible investment firms, and have a wide network of NGO contacts that we often consult.

No company is perfect. While social screens are important, corporate dialog remains vital. Conversations with management alert corporations to the presence of socially responsible investors and give us a forum to convey our clients’ concerns and values. If the dialogue reaches an impasse, we can file shareholder resolutions on your behalf.

 We are proud to compare our investment results to stock indices and investment managers that do not apply social screens. Social screens, as we and others define them, do not have an inevitable negative effect on investment results.