New York - Innovest Strategic Value Advisors announced today that it has been retained to work with a leading California pension fund to enhance its financial returns, using companies' performance on environmental and social issues to identify future out-performers. Innovest has been retained by the Contra Costa County Employees' Retirement Association to add its proprietary "EcoValue'21 Alpha Overlay" to a new, $150 million enhanced index fund, comprising large-cap U.S. equities. The fund will be lead-managed by Aeltus Investment Management Inc. of Hartford, CT who will incorporate the Innovest overlay into the investment decisions.

"Contra Costa County is demonstrating real vision and leadership with this initiative", commented Dr. Matthew Kiernan, Innovest's founder and Executive Managing Director. "While the potential of environmental and social value drivers to enhance returns is reasonably well-understood in Europe, this represents the first time, to our knowledge, that a U.S. pension fund has applied this strategy with the explicit objective of creating out-performance."

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an internationally recognized investment research and advisory firm specializing in analyzing companies' environmental and social performance and their impact on competitiveness, profitability, and share price performance. Innovest currently has over $1 billion under direct sub-advisory mandates with partners including ABN-AMRO, Mellon Capital, Brown Brothers Harriman, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc, and Credit Lyonnais. The firm is currently supporting six different investment funds, each of which has out-performed its benchmark since its inception. Innovest's pension fund clients include the Dutch fund ABP, which is the largest in Europe, with $150 billion in assets under management.

Innovest's chairman, Jim Martin, was the chief investment officer for TIAA-CREF, North America's largest pension fund for over fifteen years, and the firm's advisory directors include former senior executives from several of the world's leading financial companies, a former G7 finance minister, and the former chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an internationally recognized investment research and advisory firm specializing in analyzing companies’ performance on environmental, social, and strategic governance issues, with a particular focus on their impact on competitiveness, profitability, and share price performance. Innovest currently has offices in New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Paris, Sydney, and Tokyo.

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