Now Reading
AllianceBernstein: Kicking Off Climate Week in NYC
AllianceBernstein: Kicking Off Climate Week in NYC
Published 09-22-23
Submitted by AllianceBernstein
From AllianceBernstein's Chief Responsibility Officer, Erin Bigley:
"Hi everyone,
I’m Erin Bigley, AllianceBernstein’s Chief Responsibility Officer. As we kick off Climate Week in New York today, I’ve been reflecting on our teams’ climate-related work over the last year.
We believe that climate change can have a material impact on investment outcomes. As climate-related policies and regulations continue to increase in volume around the globe, we continue to strategize about how AB can prepare our business, and those in which we invest, for long-term success in a lower-carbon world.
A key part of this work is education and partnership.
AB recognizes the importance of ongoing education of both our investors and our clients on the latest research around climate issues. One way we do this is through our collaboration with Columbia University’s Climate School and its climate scientists. In fact, we are celebrating our fourth anniversary of our partnership with Columbia this week. One of the fruits of this partnership is the Natural Hazards Index Tool which we launched earlier this year alongside Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness to better examine physical climate risks across the US. This week, we are launching the Climate Academy 2.0 for our clients, an educational series covering several climate-related topics, including carbon markets, emerging markets and the energy transition, and China’s decarbonization challenges and opportunities.
We recognize that there are also material social risks related to climate change which should be managed. To better understand the intersections of these risks, we collaborated with eCornell, Cornell University’s External Education Unit, on an educational training for our investors that included a session on the elements of a Just Transition. We're also working on a publication with Walk Free—an international human rights organization—on the financial materiality at the intersection of climate change and human rights.
We are harnessing our climate knowledge to develop our Climate Transition Assessment and Engagement Framework—a tool designed to allow our investment teams to consistently identify material risks and opportunities for high-impact issuers within our clients’ portfolios and to signal where our investors should focus engagements with these issuers over the long term. The goal is to better understand how our investee companies are preparing their businesses to be successful in a lower-carbon economy.
We are also leveraging our climate knowledge to inform how we act as a business. AB is working to reduce carbon emissions in our operations, in part, by working to locate 85% of our employees in greener workspaces by 2025. Doing so will also encourage collaboration and foster engagement and wellness. As of March 2023, with our London office’s move to a greener building, we have met 60% of our goal, and our New York office move will follow in 2024.
At AllianceBernstein, we hope to build upon these efforts as we navigate the energy transition and the effects it will have on both our business and the issuers in which we invest. I’m looking forward to sharing more of what AB has in store. Happy NY Climate Week!"
See the original video here.
Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here
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 strive to hold ourselves as a firm to similar practices that we ask of issues. 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. AB’s mission is to help our clients define and achieve their investment goals, explicitly stating what we do to unlock opportunity for our clients. We became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This began our journey to formalize our commitment to identify responsible ways to unlock opportunities for our clients through integrating material ESG factors throughout most of our actively managed equity and fixed-income client accounts, funds and strategies. AB also engages issuers where it believes the engagement is in the best financial interest of its clients.
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 important elements in forming insights and in presenting potential risks and opportunities that can have an effect 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.
- 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 September 30, 2023, AB had $669B in assets under management, $458B of which were ESG-integrated. Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.
More from AllianceBernstein
