Odoo - Sample 1 for three columns

Capital Group

Neue Mainzer Str. 66 - 68

D-60311 Frankfurt am Main

www.capitalgroup.com

Contact Institutional Clients

Henning Busch

Managing Director - Institutional

Phone: +49 69 5095 40510

E-mail: henning.busch@capitalgroup.com

Contact Institutional Clients

Sigrid Rosemeyer

Managing Director - Institutional

Phone: +49 69 5095 40512

E-mail: Sigrid.Rosemeyer@capitalgroup.com

Contact Wholesale Clients

Matthias Mohr

Managing Director - Financial Intermediaries Germany & Austria

Phone: +49 69 5095 40517

E-mail: Matthias.Mohr@capitalgroup.com

Contact Wholesale Clients

Karolyn Krekic

Managing Director - Financial Intermediaries Germany & Austria

Phone: +49 69 5095 40514

E-mail: Karolyn.Krekic@capitalgroup.com

Company at a glance

In 1931, during the US Great Depression, The Capital Group Companies, Inc. (Capital) was founded on the belief that fundamental research is essential to achieving superior long-term investment results.

Capital is one of the largest privately held investment management organisations in the world with more than 85 years of investment experience and USD 1.9 trillion in assets under management.

Market position and target clients

Capital is one of the largest active managers in the world, with over USD 1.9 trillion in assets under management.

We offer a range of research-intensive strategies across equity, fixed income and multi-asset classes.

We offer services to a range of institutional clients and financial intermediaries across the world.

Investment philosophy in general

Investing for the long-term is core to Capital’s investment philosophy and process:

A long-term investment horizon - In our experience, investing successfully means taking the long-term view. Our investment professionals seek to identify securities that can do well over several years, by using fundamental bottom-up analysis and paying close attention to valuations. While this approach can often involve taking a stance that is at odds with the market consensus, the expectation is that new information will come to light that validates our opinions and steers the consensus view in our favor.

Discipline and experience - Long-term investing requires discipline and experience. The majority of our portfolio managers and analysts have witnessed several market cycles and have been with Capital for many years. This means they have the perspective and knowledge required to navigate volatile markets.

A strong organizational culture - Taking the long-term view is possible because of the way our company is organized and managed. Privately owned by key investment professionals and business leaders and focused exclusively on providing investment management services, Capital provides the ideal environment for investment professionals to maintain a long-term perspective when pursuing investment opportunities.

Aligned with investor success - Compensation paid to our investment professionals is heavily influenced by investment results over one-, three-, five- and eight-year periods. Increasing weight is placed on each successive measurement period to encourage a long-term investment approach. Additionally, Capital Group associates collectively are significant investors in the company’s investment offerings. This creates a vested interest in helping our investors succeed.

ESG PHILOSOPHY

ESG philosophy:

As fiduciaries, our focus on long-term shareholder value obliges us to look at Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues as part of our overall mission: improving people’s lives through successful investing. Put simply, we believe a company’s ability to align its business strategy with evolving societal expectations is essential to long-term value creation. Understanding the changing tides in government policy and social expectations can be a key driver for successful outcomes. As a result, we analyse ESG issues in an integrated way – alongside other financial and business indicators – as part of our core investment process.

Our analysts and portfolio managers share a singular focus on helping clients reach their risk and returns objectives. We believe that the increasingly complex field of ESG practices are essential ingredients of long term investment outcomes. This is why for us ESG is a natural part of our selective, bottom-up driven investment process. Our investment professionals construct portfolios from the bottom up by picking companies based on ideas generated by our in-house analysts. These analysts are given sectors to cover over time and are expected to follow the companies in their coverage for many years — and in so doing, to build up deep relationships and knowledge of these companies at many levels.

In-house research coupled with a long-term investment horizon and rigorous engagement instructs our understanding of key risks and opportunities – including regulations, societal changes, use of natural resources, and other ESG factors. We assess and incorporate these important insights alongside financial and other metrics.


Historical overview:

Over many years we have developed The Capital SystemSM approach to investment which along with our code of ethics and culture of long-term investing, ensures a robust investment process which recognizes the relevance of diverse perspectives and ESG factors in contributing to long-term sustainability. Specifically, while our integrated approach to ESG is not new, we have been working on re-formulating our four-step investment framework MADE, which we completed in Q2 2018. Our investment process is designed to provide a forum to debate new ideas and trends. Our in house governance expertise and decades of documented company engagements helps us navigate the changing tides of policy and practice in ESG. With this in mind, we have been focused on developing a more systematic approach to conduct company engagement and proxy voting on ESG issues. Specifically, we have been working on a clearer internal structure for recording and monitoring ESG engagement and improving our understanding of carbon risks within our portfolios. A cross-functional team of analysts and governance associates have analyzed 585 environmental and social proposals on which we voted since 2014 to develop enhanced guidelines going forward.

In July 2018, we appointed a Global ESG Investment Director to lead the ESG effort firm wide and coordinate initiatives in the investment groups, investment operations and client facing teams. We are also increasing our involvement in industry associations on ESG topics. This marks an increased emphasis at Capital Group on ESG investing as an integral part of our mission to improve people’s lives though successful investing while building on our historical commitment to the principles of stewardship.

Since bondholders do not have the proxy voting voice, engagement is the key tool for active stewardship. In the context of developing additional stewardship tools, recently introduced a ‘screen and engage’ methodology in our global corporate bond portfolio currently available asLuxembourg-domiciled funds. This is to facilitate monitoring of controversies and assist analysts in engagement. ESG norms-based screening makes our usual process of engaging with issuers on key issues more explicit.

Finally, we are exploring new ways to employ ESG screens in sovereign bonds’ universe without politicizing our investment process. The objective is communicate better around how we integrate governance factors, environmental risks and social issues like education, healthcare and freedom of the press.

Improvements in our ESG framework have been mainly focused on sharing information about best practices and tracking engagement activity that is carried out by our investment analysts. We have put in place processes to capture and communicate more and more this activity, where possible.


UN PRI signatory:

Capital Group has been a signatory to the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment since 22 February 2010. The UN PRI reflect the increasing relevance of environmental, social and governance issues to investment practices, and we are committed to adopting and implementing the principles where they are consistent with our fiduciary responsibilities.

We are a research-led discretionary investment manager with a bottom-up investment process focused on delivering superior, long-term sustainable returns for our clients. The Capital System SM approach to investing, which, along with our Code of Ethics, and culture of long-term investing, was developed over many years and is designed so that individual investment professionals act on their highest convictions, while limiting the risk associated with isolated decision-making. This robust investment process and our long-term focus affords us the opportunity and ability to consider the long-term drivers of a business or industry, looking past the short-term issues whilst continually assessing the current and future prospects of
the businesses and industries in whom we invest.

ESG factors often are drivers in contributing to long-term sustainable business success. Where these ESG factors are material they will be considered alongside the financial, operational and economic indicators in our fundamental analysis and valuation of companies. Our investment analysts are sector specialists and have the depth and breadth of knowledge which enables them to identify those ESG risks, and opportunities, that are material to the business and which are often intrinsic to building an understanding of a company’s business model or a sectors prospects. Our research approach is naturally leads to opportunities to engage with companies.

Our analysts and portfolio managers collectively make thousands of company visits annually, and regularly meet with the management of companies. This enables them to engage with companies on any issues of concern. We believe that our integration and engagement approach is consistent with the Principles of Responsible Investing.


Capital’s investment professionals are supported by our in-house Governance and Proxy (GAP) team. The GAP team consists of 20 associates who have considerable experience in voting and governance as well as in understanding and engaging on environmental and social issues. The main duties of the team include: voting at company meetings in every market on behalf our clients, monitoring and assisting our investment professionals with engagement work on ESG-related issues (especially as they relate to the UN Global Compact screening and, together with the analysts, engaging with companies to promote best practices). In addition, investment professionals alongwith the GAP team, Legal and Marketing departments regularly discuss industry and company developments at internal meetings.

ORGANISATION

Category

ESG-Officer x
UN PRI x
ESG-Company Report x
ESG (Company) Rating x

Investmentstrategies

Asset Classes
Equities x
Fixed Income x
Convertible Bonds
Real Estate
Multi Asset x
Others

Short describtion of your ESG-competences

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues are natural allies to our long term investment philosophy and overall corporate mission: improving people’s lives through successful investing.

Put simply, we believe a company’s ability to align its business strategy and externalities with evolving societal expectations and regulations is essential to long-term value creation. As a result, we analyse ESG issues in an integrated way – alongside other financial and business indicators – as part of our core investment process. A fundamental part of our long-term bottom-up investment process is the materiality of an issue and its ability to impact a company over the long-term; this consideration leads us to focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by organisations when seeking to engage with a company.

Fundamental research is at the heart of what we do and ESG is intrinsic to that process - backed by inhouse expertise in engagement and stewardship. Our investment professionals conduct rigorous primary research and construct portfolios from the bottom up by picking companies based on convictions generated by our in-house analysts. These analysts develop deep sector expertise by following the companies in their coverage for many years — and in so doing, build up deep relationships and knowledge of these companies at many levels. Our analysts average eight4 years of experience working for Capital Group.

ESG is integrated throughout each of the four stages of our investment process, which we have termed

MADE:

  • Meet: We meet with many decision-makers who could impact the outcome of our investments – not just the CEO. We visit suppliers, regulators, customers and government officials to develop a holistic, long-term perspective – including ESG factors. We conduct over 12,000 face-to-face meetings each year.

  • Analyse: Our investment decisions are driven by extensive in-house assessments of long-term risks and opportunities, with ESG factors an important consideration. Our investment analysts have an average tenure of eight years at Capital Group, and portfolio managers have an average tenure of 22 years. This underpins our long-term investment horizon and deep knowledge of the firms in which we invest.

  • Distil: Our portfolio managers are incentivised to take a long-term view of the investments they make through their one, three, five and eight year remuneration packages. This means only the highest conviction ideas make it into our portfolios.

  • Engage: We regularly and systematically meet with management as well as board members. We seek to achieve progress on key ESG issues through engagement, not exclusion. We maintain a robust dialogue with key decision-makers for our investment holdings – management, government officials and others.

We exercised our proxy vote in more than 2,600 annual and special general meetings in Fiscal Year 2018

ESG-Methods

Methods

ESG Intergration x
Best in Class

Exclusion Criteria
Positiv Screening
Impact Investing
Engagement / Active Ownership x
Minimum

ESG Reporting