“The screens are a core part of what we do. We are very proud that our clients don’t want to earn returns from certain parts of the market,” he says, before the magic word: “But…it is a very small part of what we do.
“We are very much focused on performance and that means getting to the themes, getting to the positive aspects of, say, the move to healthy eating which does take you away from tobacco and alcohol to a degree but let’s focus on the really interesting stories that are in there on the healthy eating side.”
His approach is to consider that if society does not like certain things, what does society like, which companies benefit from what society likes and which of these companies look well valued on that basis.
It is a total turnaround from simply ignoring those companies that do not operate in certain industries, or that are associated with unethical practices.
And Brown is by no means the only fund manager running money this way with Hermes and Amundi among many who make a big play on their SRI (or EOS in the case of Hermes) credentials. There are giants in the game such as Schroders whose lead portfolio manager for global and international equities, Simon Webber, also runs the firm’s climate change fund.
