AllianceBernstein (AB) is proud to have been accepted as a signatory to the UK Stewardship Code for the fourth consecutive year. The Code sets high stewardship standards for those investing money on behalf of UK savers and pensioners, and those that support them.

To see the full list of signatories, please visit: https://lnkd.in/dSQF8XvG

AB’s Global Stewardship Statement and 2023 Report is a comprehensive overview of our activities in corporate responsibility, responsible investing, and stewardship. Because responsibility starts from the top, we begin this statement with our purpose and values, describing how our culture can enable both responsible investing and effective stewardship.

In the Statement, we describe how we set policy, consider material ESG risks and opportunities, and serve as active stewards in our investment-management services. We also highlight the progress we’ve made in implementing our responsibility strategy and discuss the achievements of the firm in further developing our governance structure and approach to DEI, as well as our progress in ESG integration, engagement, proxy voting, policy advocacy, and industry participation.

AB became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This began our journey to formalize our approach to identifying responsible ways to unlock opportunities for our clients. We continue to develop differentiated insights and integrate material ESG considerations throughout most of our actively managed strategies (80% of our actively managed AUM as of March 31, 2024). Stewardship is fundamental to our responsible investment and research processes. When in the best interest of our clients, we engage with issuers on material topics. We also engage with nonprofits and other stakeholders, including but not limited to industry bodies, policymakers, academics, regulators, governments and community groups. Through engagements, we glean insight and encourage action. The insight we gain helps us to promote company and issuer behavior that is in the best interest of our clients and their financial goals. We encourage action that can lead to better identification and management of risks and opportunities, strategy, operations and, ultimately, results. Insight and action drive our ability to make decisions and generate enhanced risk-adjusted investment returns for our clients. As stewards of our clients’ assets, we believe that proxy voting is a fundamental responsibility. We vote our active and passive shareholdings and unit holdings in accordance with our proprietary, publicly available Proxy Voting and Governance Policy.

In 2023, the responsible investing space continued to mature. Investors around the world experienced heightened scrutiny of responsible investing, increasing greenwashing concerns and a tidal wave of regulation, including ESG-related regulation.

During the year, AB continued to strengthen our corporate responsibility practices, prioritize proprietary research and deliver innovative solutions for our clients. Consistent with our fiduciary duty to clients, we continued to focus our ESG integration efforts on identifying financially material risks and opportunities within our investment portfolios. We continued our efforts to recruit and retain valuable talent and foster a culture of differentiated insights. In 2023 we received a score of 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index for the eighth consecutive year. We opened the doors of our new office in London, which has been awarded a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) “outstanding” rating for being in the top 1% of UK domestic refurbishments. We expanded our employee benefit offerings to include wellness-oriented activities, and we enhanced our employee and management training programs, which focus on leadership development and career planning.

As an investor, we developed and enhanced partnerships that drove novel research and client solutions. Highlights include our collaboration with eCornell, Cornell’s external education unit, to deepen investor knowledge of our three social research priorities: a Changing World, a Just World and a Healthy World. We also continued our partnership with the Columbia Climate School, launching our Climate Change and Investment Academy 2023 to our clients and kicking off the Climate Change and Investment Curriculum for our investment teams. Finally, we developed our Climate Transition Alignment Framework (CTAF), which we are using to assess companies’ material climate-related risks and opportunities.

Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here.

AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein (AB) is a leading global investment management firm that offers diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets.

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) considerations into most of our actively managed strategies (approximately 79% of AB’s actively managed assets under management as of December 31, 2024).

Our purpose—to pursue insight that unlocks opportunity—describes the ethos of our firm. Because we are an active investment manager, differentiated insights drive our ability to design innovative investment solutions and help our clients achieve their investment goals. We became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This began our journey to formalize our approach to identifying 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. Material ESG factors are important elements in forming insights and in presenting potential risks and opportunities that can affect the performance of the companies and issuers that we invest in and the portfolios that we build. AB also engages issuers when it believes the engagement is in the best financial interest of its clients.

Our values illustrate the behaviors and actions that create our strong culture and enable us to meet our clients' needs. Each value inspires us to be better: 

• Invest in One Another: At AB, there’s no “one size fits all” and no mold to break. We celebrate idiosyncrasy and make sure everyone’s voice is heard. We seek and include talented people with diverse skills, abilities and backgrounds, who expand our thinking. A mosaic of perspectives makes us stronger, helping us to nurture enduring relationships and build actionable solutions.
• Strive for Distinctive Knowledge: Intellectual curiosity is in our DNA. We embrace challenging problems and ask tough questions. We don’t settle for easy answers when we seek to understand the world around us—and that’s what makes us better investors and partners to our colleagues and clients. We are independent thinkers who go where the research and data take us. And knowing more isn’t the end of the journey, it’s the start of a deeper conversation.
• Speak with Courage and Conviction: Collegial debate yields conviction, so we challenge one another to think differently. Working together enables us to see all sides of an issue. We stand firmly behind our ideas, and we recognize that the world is dynamic. To keep pace with an ever changing world and industry, we constantly reassess our views and share them with intellectual honesty. Above all, we strive to seek and speak truth to our colleagues, clients and others as a trusted voice of reason.
• Act with Integrity—Always: Although our firm is comprised of multiple businesses, disciplines and individuals, we’re united by our commitment to be strong stewards for our people and our clients. Our fiduciary duty and an ethical mind-set are fundamental to the decisions we make. 

As of December 31, 2024, AB had $792B in assets under management, $555B of which were ESG-integrated. Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.

Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here.

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