Ben Yeoh - The 50 Shades Of Green

Episode 23, Nov 24, 2019, 02:00 PM

Ben Yeoh is the Senior Portfolio Manager, Co-manager of Global Equities, a specialist in Healthcare and ESG Champion at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Global Asset Management (GAM UK). Ben is also a member of the Investor Advisory Group at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). He chairs the Responsible Investment Advisory Committee at Royal London Asset Management. He is also the co-author of New Text Book on ESG Investing by the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute (CFA UK)

Highlights:

Looking beyond the causal drivers into more active stewardship and long term sustainability
There is a spectrum of capital and the markets will decide on how to react to corporates without sustainability strategy or if they decide not to price in carbon
A lot of companies are over-borrowing from human capital, environmental and natural capital or cutting R&D
‘We want to avoid companies creating contingent liabilities or liabilities you don’t see on the balance sheet, which are typically extra financial, call them ESG.’
We will need abatement in hard to abate sectors like cement, fertilizers, flying, steel making, aluminum, plastics, or all that.
Integrated vs exclusionary ESG vs positive impact
Degrowth movement vs growth and decoupled growth
‘You need systems thinking in combination with personal agency’
‘Stewardship Code 2020 is going to be a really important piece ... because it's putting the onus on a lot of people in the investment chain to report in a much more transparent way. I'm hopeful that is going to raise the bar in terms of what we're looking for on a systems level.’

Time Stamp:

[03:38] What is sustainable and impact investing?

[04:43] Active stewardship, SDGs and long-term net benefit.

[07:08] Mark Carney on the spectrum of capital

[09:48] RBC as a purpose-driven organisation committing $100bn in sustainable Finance by 2025

[11:00] Integrated ESG strategy with deep stewardship
[12:30] Over-borrowing from contingent liabilities and the impact on capital and returns
[13:50] Creating sustainable capital, alpha and return
[14:50] Active stewardship

[16:29] How Ben started his journey into ESG and sustainability
[19:45] Cross-silo thinking

[20:20] Informal Sustainability mingle
[22:00] Improvement of data availability and access

[24:18] Trends and growth of sustainable assets in all classes

[26:23] The opportunities in sustainable and impact investment
[29:00] The need for abatement on certain sectors

[31:00] What investors are looking for and is important to them
[33:00] Climate change perceptions & YALE survey

[37:50] Ben’s approach to Integrated ESG vs exclusionary vs active ownership vs positive impact
[41:00] Rotten Documentary > S2E3 - WATER

[43:50] Responsibility of businesses: Who is responsible for irresponsibility business?

[46:60] Influencing demand-side consumer behavior

[49:00] Economic approaches as solutions and interconnection with the roles of people and companies
[51:50] Trust Barometers

[52:10] Third party certifications > ILA & Partners, Impact Tracker, B-Corp
[54:30] The updated UK Stewardship Code 2020
[55:10] How do we scale ?
[56:45] What inspired Ben

Useful links:

Ben Yeoh’s Linkedin

Ben Yeoh’s personal blog - Then Do Better

Royal Bank of Canada Global Assets Management

Mark Carney of the Bank of England
Bank of England Climate Change

Elroy Dimson

Andrew Parry of Hermes Investment Management

Alex Edmans author of Grow The Pie
Global Sustainable Investment Review 2018

Fiona Reynolds of UN PRI
Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2019
The RBC ESG Exchange

Colin Mayer author of Prosperity

Claire Spedding Dykta of National Grid

Kate Raworth of Doughnut Economics

Tyler Cowan > Growth
Rotten Documentary - Ref: Season 2 Episode 3 > WATER
Amazon commitment to NET ZERO by 2040