Acadian sustainable fund renamed

The Acadian Wholesale Geared Global Equity Fund has been renamed to the Acadian Wholesale Sustainable Geared Global Equity Fund to better reflect the ESG focuses in the portfolio.

Mark Mukundan, Vice President, Product and Wholesale Markets at Acadian Asset Management Australia said the fund’s changed alignment to the ungeared version of the strategy continues the firm’s considerations of ESG and sustainability factors.

“Acadian’s systematic process already takes into account a significant number of ESG factors when forecasting stock returns,” he said.

“On top of this, we have added further sustainability criteria, including reducing the fund’s carbon exposure and incorporating more of a tilt towards companies providing environmental solutions.”

Mukundan also said the changes have been enacted without material shift in the risk and return objectives of the fund.

“We believe that it’s critical to incorporate sustainability considerations into our investment strategies and that the demand for such strategies will continue to grow,” Mukundan said.

“As with all our strategies, our investment process also includes voting and engagements, including using our proprietary artificial intelligence approach to better assess public companies’ ESG credentials.”

The changes follow Acadian’s long track record of incorporating responsible investing concepts into its core processes. The firm was also the first quantitative investment firm to sign the Principle for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative in 2009.