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The Investment Stewardship concept calls on investors to use all means at their disposal to create: long-term value for their clients and beneficiaries & sustainable benefits for the economy, the environment and society.

As a Responsible investor, Candriam pays particular attention to the corporate governance policies, structures and practices of the companies in which it invests on behalf of its customers and the funds under management.

Starting from 2022, Candriam decided to pre-announce some of its voting intentions ahead of the related general meetings when such pre-declaration may answer to stakehoders’ demand of improved transparency, serve an engagement objective or as an escalation measure.

Voting Dashboard since 2020

The first six months of 2024 have been eventful.

As Active Investors, Engagement and Voting are at the centre of our investing and our stewardship. We work in partnership with our investees, as we believe in issuers’ capacity to achieve sustainable performance.

Since 2015, our three Conviction topics have been Energy Transition, Fair Work Conditions and Business Ethics. Our engagement framework is evergreen, but the specifics are ever-changing.

In 2023, we began to pre-declare our voting intentions. This provides transparency to our stakeholders and may also provide a means of escalation.

While for the most part, the 2023 proxy season unfolded as expected, we did witness a few surprises.

At Candriam, we define engagement as interactions we have on ESG issues, not only with current or potential investees but also with entities which, through their competence and/ or authorities, are able to initiate or influence change in the regulatory or market frameworks involving ESG aspects.

Having passed the mid-year point, we are able to discern some major trends emerging from the 2021 voting season.

All around the world, there have been significant delays and cancellations of annual general meetings (AGMs) during the early stages of the pandemic, leading to audit process failures in Asian markets and other challenges. However, this did not stop some of the emerging voting trends, such as climate-related resolutions, which featured prominently at a number of important meetings.

The year 2019 was rich and eventful, spanning a complex list of topics. This summary focuses on our three Conviction Topics, which together accounted for more than two-thirds of our total direct issuer dialogues. These same three topics, Energy Transition, Fair Working Conditions, and Business Ethics, have marked our efforts over the last five years, and will be the stepping stones to 2020 and beyond.

Integrating ESG factors into the financial analysis of companies, engaging in constructive dialogue with them to encourage best practices and exercising the shareholder vote should be the norm for any committed investor for whom ESG is more than just three letters. At Candriam, these three actions have been a reality in our daily lives as investors for nearly 20 years.

Sovereign engagement is rare, and direct engagement even more so. Not only is access difficult to obtain, but great care must be taken to avoid even the appearance of lobbying or interfering. This case describes a successful engagement with government representatives, IMF officials, and others which improved our understanding of a material event.

Although Unilever was already an example of ‘Best Practice’ in food industry nutrition transparency, a working group of investors believes that the entire food industry must do better. And good news! When Unilever raised the game, other major food producers quickly followed to adopt the new, stronger best practices.

Teleperformance had historically been embraced by the sustainable community, with a reputation for understanding the importance of employee well-being. It receives awards for employee satisfaction, and includes employee well-being as a factor in its executive remuneration.

The pandemic changed the rules of the game at both individual and collective scales. It impacted the world economy from many different perspectives. Not only did it create a short-term financial strain, it also pushed several corporates to re-draft their long-term strategies.

Kingspan Group is an Ireland-based company that provides insulation and building envelope solutions. It has five operating divisions, with the production of insulation products accounting for over 80% of company’s business.

Governments, law enforcement agencies and corporates are rushing to adopt Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) with a hope of increasing security, as well as improving efficiency and customer experience. Investors are highly interested. FRT, along with other Artificial Intelligence (AI) functions, is a promising technology. Concurrently, its rapid deployment has raised major concerns about the impact on privacy, data protection and civil liberties.

SMID companies have fewer resources than their large-capitalization peers, yet are often growing faster. We apply our experience in Engagement campaigns to the special situations of these companies, beginning with their need to recruit, train, and retain employees, while competing against larger companies for the same workers.

The health crisis has caused more than 900,000 deaths in Europe1. But it has also illustrated the health sector’s tremendous drive for innovation in its search for solutions to the pandemic. Candriam’s aim in its investments in the health sector is to identify, amongst those companies capable of discovering and producing the solutions of tomorrow, the most innovative.

The impacts of Climate Change on the financial sector are already measured in the billions, just for extreme weather events. Add in other elements such as credit risks for banks, and delays in tackling climate change could cost financial companies up to $1.2 trillion over the next 15 years.

The Covid Crisis has put a renewed spotlight on the ‘S’ in ESG. Investors need more transparency to analyze not only the employee stakeholder, but the flexibility and preparedness of companies in crises such as Covid.

Teleperformance is a global leader in digitally integrated business services, including call centers or web platforms, with employees in 80 countries. As a service business, it is people-driven, growing to 330,000 employees and €5 billion in revenues over 40 years. Headquartered in France, its largest perations are in EMEA, India, the Philippines, the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

Amongst industries, the metals and mining sector is responsible for a large part of man-made greenhouse gas emissions in Australia and globally; not only directly, but especially through the end uses of its products after extraction and sale. BHP is one of the world’s largest mining conglomerates, and one of Australia’s largest corporations.

In this fifth edition of our Sovereign Sustainability results, we once again call on the sub-scores to examine a particular issue across the more than 120 countries we analyse. In previous editions, we have examined the interaction between climate goals and deforestation, climate goals and housing, and rule of law and US elections. With 50% of the citizens around the world going to the polls this year, we assure you that we are incorporating many of the governance elements of our model in our investment and risk analyses.

This controversial activity policy is the concrete expression of Candriam’s sustainability leadership. It defines which activities, due to their widely recognised ethical and economic unsustainability, are to be excluded from Candriam’s investment portfolios across asset classes. Candriam recognises the important role that asset managers play in tackling major global issues, such as health and climate change, and strives to be at the forefront of sustainability by advancing its policies and practices.

Our climate is changing faster and faster, bringing our world closer to disastrous social and economic consequences every year. We are reaching the tipping point on every planetary boundary, meaning that at the current pace, we will reach a point of no return in this decade, threatening the future of both our planet and mankind.

Financial markets play a pivotal role in the financing of companies’ activities to support economic growth and foster innovation. However, economic development and growth should be sustainable in the long run benefiting everyone across generations. In 2015, both the COP21 Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) clearly articulated the need to shift the emphasis from measuring economic growth to appraising and incentivizing sustainable economic development for all.

Sustainability is rooted in Candriam's operating model and forms a key part of our corporate culture. Candriam’s sustainable development strategy leads us to incorporate sustainability trends shaping the world of tomorrow within the process of defining our firm’s strategic orientations. Our philosophy is to establish and maintain a balance between responsible behaviour towards all stakeholders and the pursuit of sustainable financial performance.

We believe that respecting and upholding Human Rights is part of our corporate responsibility, as an employer, in our operations, and as an asset manager to whom investors entrust their portfolios. We support the principles enshrined in key international conventions and standards that guide our Human Rights Policy, which applies to all Candriam staff and stakeholders, across the company’s operations and investment activities.

Climate change is one of the most urgent and important challenges that society and investors are facing today.

The current global economic and geopolitical landscape remains as uncertain as ever. While the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic are fading into memory, the Russia-Ukraine war tragically continues and new conflicts have emerged in the Middle East. Even the stabilisation of leading economies and the retreat of inflation, though positive, leave many uncertainties about the next phase of global development. Additionally, the signs of destructive climate change continue to mount.

Stewardship, a term often used when speaking of Voting and Engagement, includes those functions but is really an end-to-end process of responsibility, from establishing good governance at the top, all the way to delivering and safeguarding the investments which meet our clients’ needs. This report draws on all the specialty topics we report on – our philosophy and approach, investment process Transparency Codes, Voting, Corporate Social Responsibility, and how we determine client needs.

Dispelling some common myths of sustainable investing. True or false: sustainable strategies underperform? Let’s put an end to overcoming misconceptions of sustainable investing!

In 2015, the year of the COPS21 conference in Paris, the global level of CO2 emissions reached 35.21 billion tons. In December that year, the Paris Agreement was signed, setting out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C compared to the pre-industrial levels.

We welcome the European Taxonomy, a guide to help drive sustainable investements and green the financial sector. Find out more about how the taxonomy can be implemented in our whitepaper.

In this paper, we want to demystify the terminology and abbreviations so that you can understand the benefits of sustainable investing without being overwhelmed by jargon and acronyms.

Positive and negative approaches in Sustainable Investing: better understand them to align your investments with values and create outperformance through ESG.

If you feel a bit lost faced with all the obscure acronyms that seem to be taking over the ESG debate these days, don’t worry, you are not alone in that situation. We have created this series of short briefing notes to provide you, as an investor, with the essential things you need to know to understand how what some have dubbed a “regulatory tsunami” will impact you and what you need to do next.

Are 'Sustainable' investments truly sustainable? What Environmental, Social, and Governance factors are actually included in your investment? Does your investment really do what it says on the label? David Czupryna's overview of the new EU requirements concludes they are likely to clarify the situation, while the lingo may be a lot to learn.

A guide to sustainable investing: Voting & Engagement – there is no sustainability without stewardship.

The Global Strategic Committee monitors the association membership and decides who represents Candriam within those associations. The principle is that ESG experts actively and regularly participate to RI working groups within industry associations and associations with an ESG purpose. Leading roles are also supported.

Candriam is committed to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). This commitment is reflected in all of Candriam ’s activities as well as promoted in our relations with our stakeholders including the associations Candriam is member of.

The Assessment Report is an export of the scores for all the assessed indicators and modules you responded to in the PRI Reporting Framework during the 2023 reporting period.

This public Transparency Report is an export of the signatory’s responses to the PRI Reporting Framework during the 2023 reporting period. It includes the signatory’s responses to core indicators, as well as responses to plus indicators that the signatory has agreed to make public.