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AllianceBernstein: 2022 Global Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement and Report
AllianceBernstein: 2022 Global Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement and Report
Published 10-20-22
Submitted by AllianceBernstein
AllianceBernstein published its third Global Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement and Report in September 2022. It serves as an annual progress report describing the actions that we have taken during the year to address modern slavery in our operations, including our supply chain and employees, and our investment processes.
The 2022 Statement details our progress, including last year’s centralized ESG engagement campaign through which AB analysts engaged with 44 unique issuers on the topic of modern slavery. We also outline how we participate in modern slavery working groups and collaborative engagements and have signed important investor statements on the issue. Because we believe being a responsible investor starts with being a responsible corporate, AB identifies potential risks in our own operations. In our 2020-2021 due diligence questionnaire cycle, we mapped vendors’ responses to questions about modern slavery and categorized each vendor based on our analysis of their exposure to modern slavery. AB’s thought leadership on the topic of modern slavery has also grown, publishing several blogs and a white paper on the topic of modern slavery in the past year. AB’s reputation and public recognition as a leader in addressing modern slavery risks has evolved tremendously over the last year from receiving awards to growing participation in collaborative initiatives.
Additionally, the 2022 Statement includes a section on measuring effectiveness of how AB is managing and addressing modern slavery risk. The section includes quantitative statistics on the number of modern slavery engagements we’ve conducted year over year, the number of companies we’ve assigned a risk exposure rating to and our score on the Human Rights Foundation Corporate Equality Index. As of June 30, 2022, we have conducted 126 engagements on the topic of modern slavery cumulatively, we have assigned a risk exposure rating for over 800 companies in total, and we have scored 100% on the Human Rights Foundation Corporate Equality Index for the seventh consecutive year.
Finally, the Statement outlines our future plans in terms of leveraging our proprietary frameworks to consider modern slavery risks in our investments and continuing to research and engage issuers on modern slavery risks. AB’s 2022 ESG Engagement Campaign is focused on “action” engagements, which encourage issuers to set meaningful, measurable goals and targets related to the most material ESG issues to their businesses.
Please see the Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement and Report to learn more about how AB addresses modern slavery in our operations and investments.
AllianceBernstein
AllianceBernstein
AllianceBernstein (AB) is a leading global investment management firm that offers high-quality research and diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets. We believe corporate responsibility, responsible investing and stewardship are intertwined. To be effective stewards of our clients’ assets, we strive to invest responsibly—assessing, engaging on and integrating material issues, including environmental, social and governance (ESG), and climate change considerations in most of our actively managed strategies. We also believe that being a responsible firm allows us to be more responsible investors. Our stewardship practices, investment strategy and decision-making are guided by our purpose, mission and values.
Our purpose—pursue insight that unlocks opportunity—inspires our firm to act responsibly. While opportunity means something different to each of our stakeholders; it always means considering the unique goals of each stakeholder that go beyond the desire for financial returns. AB’s mission is to help our clients define and achieve their investment goals, explicitly stating what we do each day to unlock opportunity for our clients. We became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This formalized our commitment to identify responsible ways to unlock opportunities for our clients through ESG integration in most of our actively managed equity and fixed-income client accounts, funds and strategies.
Because we are an active manager, our differentiated insights drive our ability to deliver alpha and design innovative investment solutions. ESG and climate issues are key elements in forming insights and in presenting potential risks and opportunities that can have an impact on the performance of the companies and issuers that we invest in and the portfolios that we build.
Our values provide a framework for the behaviors and actions that deliver on our purpose and mission. Values align our actions. Each value emerges from the firm’s collective character—yet is also aspirational. Each value challenges us to become a more responsible version of AB.
- Invest in One Another means that we have a strong organizational culture where diversity is celebrated and mentorship is critical to our success. When we invest in one another, we empower our employees to reach their potential, so that they can help our clients realize theirs. This enables us to partner with clients to design and deliver improved investment outcomes.
- Strive for Distinctive Knowledge means that we collaboratively identify creative solutions to clients’ economic, ESG and climate- related investment challenges through our expertise in a wide range of investment disciplines, close collaboration among our investment experts and creative solutions.
- Speak with Courage and Conviction informs how we engage our AB colleagues and issuers. We seek to learn from other parts of our business to strengthen our own views. And we engage issuers for insight and action by sharing ideas and best practices.
- Act with Integrity—Always is the bedrock of our relationships and has specific meaning for our business. Unlike many other asset managers, we’re singularly focused on providing asset management and research to our clients. We don’t engage in activities that could be distracting, or create conflicts—such as investment banking, insurance writing, commercial banking or proprietary trading for our own account. We are unconflicted and fully accountable.
As of December 31, 2022, AB had $646B in assets under management, $445B of which were ESG-integrated. Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.
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