CISI ESG Event – ‘Inertia is not an option’

A great start to the year with our first event at CISI Ireland. It was a full house to hear Des Lawrence, a senior strategist at State Street Global Investors, give a guided tour of what maybe the single biggest topic in asset management today - ESG. This was a real world approach to the issue and the Q&A session showed how engaged the audience were. Des produced survey results to show how asset managers are increasingly seeing this as a core part of their of their business development and how trustees are seeing it as a core to their fiduciary duties. The trend to ESG is irreversible driven by regulators, governments and investors. Des pointed out how sophisticated portfolio construction enables a fine tuning of outcomes to meet investor demands. The watchword for managers, trustees, and investors according to Des is "Inertia is not an option".

SSGA very kindly hosted the event.