ÖGUT sustainability report awards excellent rating to ThomasLloyd.
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Zürich, 18. June 2015.“Highly compatible” and “a stable outlook in the medium term” – these were the assessments of the Austrian Society for Environment and Technology (ÖGUT) in its expert report on the ThomasLloyd SICAV-SIF – Cleantech Infrastructure Fund, which invests in infrastructural projects in the field of Asian sustainable power generation. The Fund was examined in detail on the basis of the set of criteria which ÖGUT uses to certify corporate provision and pension funds.
ÖGUT’s ratings range between Minus 9 and Plus 9, and the Fund achieved an overall score of Plus 6.5, placing it in the highest possible rating segment. This exceptional score demonstrates that investing in the ThomasLloyd SICAV-SIF – Cleantech Infrastructure Fund can, from an investor’s point of view (corporate provision and pension funds), represent a positive factor in that investor’s sustainability balance sheet. The sustainability assessment focussed especially on the general standards and usages prevalent in the field of sustainable investments, and the ÖGUT Label’s general conditions for corporate provision and pension funds. The Fund’s methods and portfolio were assessed. The report spoke especially of the Fund’s positive environmental orientation and its declared investment policy in the market for renewable energy and infrastructure projects in Asia. It also ascribed to the Fund a special social relevance on account of its regional focus on developing and newly industrialising countries.
In the assessment of its methods, ThomasLloyd’s investment process was given special mention since it considers in detail the economic aspects of a project as well as the natural and energy-policy circumstances attached to the location. On the basis, if its experience in Asia, ThomasLloyd develops economic improvement activities with a high degree of economical and social relevance, and this was also seen positively. The positive sustainability profile which emerges from investing in renewable energies in Asia is also clearly reflected in ThomasLloyd’s portfolio, according to ÖGUT. Construction of the current power plant portfolio is, it says, responsible for 14,000 sustainable jobs in the power stations and in agriculture. After completion as many as 1.7 million people will be supplied with sustainable electricity, some of them for the first time.
ÖGUT categorises the Fund’s methods as ‘explicitly sustainable’ because of its clear thematic orientation and on account of its collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the ‘World Bank Group’. The foundation for this, it says, is in particular its agreed environmental and social criteria (E&S) as well as previously defined Environmental and Social Action Plans, which are used as part of the collaboration with the IFC.
“The ÖGUT Report demonstrates once again that we are on the right track because we are creating sustainable value, both for our investors and for the people on location. It is also proof that sustainability and profits do not necessarily contradict. We are very pleased that the Fund was found to be highly compatible on the basis of the list of criteria used by ÖGUT to certify corporate provision and pension funds, that short-term changes to its sustainability quality are not to be expected, and that the outlook is considered stable over the medium term. This excellent result shows that ThomasLloyd and its open special AIF enables the special investor segment to participate to a significant degree in the growth opportunities of Asia’s renewable energy infrastructure,” says T.U. Michael Sieg, Chairman and CEO of the ThomasLloyd Group.
