Article

Positive Conversations 2022

March 2023

Key Points

  • Responsible business practices help deliver sustainable long-term growth and address global challenges
  • This report details the type of discussions we have with companies about their business practices
  • From our carbon footprint to social issues and voting on shareholder proposals, we take a thoughtful approach to ESG

This article provides an overview of Positive Change’s Positive Conversations.

Positive Conversations, provides a snapshot of the discussions we have

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How we think about business practices

Responsible business practices are fundamental to delivering sustainable long-term growth and addressing global challenges. That’s why as part of our impact analysis we look at a company’s business practices. Our bottom-up fundamental research covers their entire value chain.

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E – Environment

This section of the full report covers:

  • Positive Change’s carbon footprint and the highest contributors to its emissions
  • Our Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) commitments and the progress being made by each company towards net zero alignment
  • Understanding the portfolio’s exposure to biodiversity loss
  • Our participation in the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) pilot

 

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S – Social

This section of the report includes two examples of our outcomes-based approach to engaging with management teams on social issues during 2022. The first covers Nu Holdings and financial inclusion in Brazil. The second looks at Deere and the ‘right to repair’ debate.

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G – Governance

From pre-buy analysis to portfolio monitoring and proxy voting, we take governance seriously. We use an example from Moderna’s AGM and a carefully considered shareholder proposal filed by Oxfam to illustrate our approach.

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Engaging for positive change – company conversations

A chance to take a closer look at the conversations we had with companies during 2022 as we sought to influence positive change. There are case studies grouped by our three engagement objectives, followed by an overview of all our engagements over the year:

  • Understanding (HDFC and Peloton)
  • Relationship-building (Moderna and Nu Holdings)
  • Influencing (Coursera, Xylem)

 

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Proxy voting

An overview of voting over the 12 months to the end of December 2022.

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Risk Factors

The views expressed should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. They reflect opinion and should not be taken as statements of fact nor should any reliance be placed on them when making investment decisions.

This communication was produced and approved in March 2023 and has not been updated subsequently. It represents views held at the time of writing and may not reflect current thinking.

Potential for Profit and Loss

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This communication contains information on investments which does not constitute independent research. Accordingly, it is not subject to the protections afforded to independent research, but is classified as advertising under Art 68 of the Financial Services Act (‘FinSA’) and Baillie Gifford and its staff may have dealt in the investments concerned.

All information is sourced from Baillie Gifford & Co and is current unless otherwise stated.

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