We believe that environmental considerations may present material risks and opportunities to our portfolio companies. Moreover, we believe that we as a firm should act responsibly in terms of our own environmental footprint. Three ways we seek to be good environmental stewards include:
- We seek to minimize our own carbon footprint, especially in international due diligence: Air travel comprises most of our firm’s carbon footprint. During the Covid-19 pandemic, our international travel to meet with company management teams was replaced by virtual meetings online. Now that Covid has generally subsided, we believe that some travel is appropriate in our investment due diligence process. However, we have also found that virtual engagements can be effective. Our goal as a firm is to be thoughtful about our carbon footprint in terms of our research travel and utilize virtual meetings when they are equally effective.
- We support efforts for reasonable corporate disclosure on environmental issues: Understanding a company’s carbon mitigation strategy is fraught with difficulty due to heterogeneity in reporting. The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has formed the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) to establish consistent methods for corporate disclosure. There is an urgent need for standardized measures that would ensure clear and consistent evaluation of the climate-related risks and opportunities facing corporations. To understand a company’s environmental impact, reporting frameworks must be updated to include standardized measures that provide consistency. Rondure is a member of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), which contributes to creating a unified set of disclosure recommendations for the ISSB.
- We engage with our portfolio companies on behalf of shareholders via the proxy voting process: Rondure methodically votes all proxies on behalf of fund shareholders. Along with our internal due diligence, we utilize the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) Sustainability Voting Policy (SVP). The ISS SVP references internationally recognized sustainability-related initiatives such as the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI), to which Rondure is a signatory. Other references include the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), United Nations Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Carbon Principles, International Labor Organization Conventions (ILO) and CERES Roadmap for Sustainability. Our proxy voting record is available on our website.
The information contained herein, including any opinion, is expressed as of the date hereof and is subject to change. Rondure Global assumes no obligation to update or otherwise revise the foregoing information.
CFA® is a trademark owned by CFA Institute. The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation is issued by the CFA Institute. Candidates must meet one of the following prerequisites: undergraduate degree and four years of professional experience involving investment decision-making, or four years of qualified work experience (full-time, but not necessarily investment related). Candidates are then required to undertake extensive self-duty programs (250 hours of study for each of the three levels) and pass examinations for all three levels.
