How can Core Real Estate Investors have a positive impact on Climate?

Whether you were brave enough to hold or are now looking to build exposure to the value factor, we believe investors should take specific approaches to ensure their value portfolio delivers on expected financial and ESG outcomes.

Join our experts as they reveal a more thoughtful approach to portfolio construction that leverages both targeted factor exposures and ESG research. Key topics include:

• Combining value with factors like quality and momentum can result in higher returns and lower risk
• Naïve integration of ESG factors such as climate risk can negatively impact your factor exposure
• Remaining country and/or sector neutral reduces active risk and limits underperformance versus the benchmark


IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This material is directed to professional and eligible counterparties only and should not be relied upon by retail investors. The information is not intended for distribution or use by any person in any jurisdiction where such distribution would be contrary to local law or regulation. Northern Trust and its affiliates may have positions in and may effect transactions in the markets, contracts and related investments different than described in this information.

Investing involves risk- no investment strategy or risk management technique can guarantee returns or eliminate risk in any market environment.

Northern Trust Asset Management is composed of Northern Trust Investments, Inc. Northern Trust Global Investments Limited, Northern Trust Fund Managers (Ireland) Limited, Northern Trust Global Investments Japan, K.K, NT Global Advisors, Inc., 50 South Capital Advisors, LLC, Belvedere Advisors LLC and investment personnel of The Northern Trust Company of Hong Kong Limited and The Northern Trust Company.

Issued in the United Kingdom by Northern Trust Global Investments Limited and in the EEA by Northern Trust Fund Managers (Ireland) Limited.
© 2021 Northern Trust Corporation. Head Office: 50 South La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois 60603 USA

*For professional clients only*

Now more than ever, investors are turning to ETFs and index funds to build more sustainable portfolios. In this webinar, experts at MSCI & iShares explain why sustainable portfolios start with indexing and how indexing is helping make sustainable investing mainstream. They will also discuss the state of the sustainable investing market today, key trends to look for in the future and the different ways to build sustainable portfolios that target a variety of investment goals.

Presented by:
James Gloak – Lead Product Strategist, iShares Sustainable Investing, BlackRock
Guido Giese – Executive Director, Applied Equity Research, MSCI

Moderated by:
Brendan Maton, IPE

Expert Livestream, 14:00 UK time, 29 March

The Specialist Fields:

Epoch Investment Partners: Why capital allocation matters
Guinness Asset Management: Why quality matters

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IAN MORTIMER, Portfolio Manager, Guinness Asset Management on Why Quality Matters:

The approach: to invest in good quality businesses with persistently high returns on capital and strong balance sheets, that are highly cash generative, and that are trading at attractive valuations. Such businesses are best placed to pay a sustainable and growing dividend in the future.

A balanced approach – seeking a return from a combination of cash flow growth, multiple expansion, and dividends – alongside a focus on quality characteristics puts the investor in a good position whatever the future market direction in 2021 and beyond.
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JOHN TOBIN, Portfolio Manager, Epoch Investment Partners explains why Capital Allocation is Key.

A company should reinvest capital if the expected return on invested capital is greater than the company’s cost of capital. Remaining free cash flow should be returned to shareholders via shareholder yield.

Capital allocation matters, because decisions on how to allocate cash flows – whether to reinvest in order to grow a company, or to return capital to shareholders – can create or destroy long-term shareholder value.

Recent years witnessed a significant increase in interest from investors in factor and multi-factor investing. 2020, however, turned out to be an unpleasant year for many investors in factor-based strategies. This includes the widely cited value factor drawdowns, but also multi-factor strategies themselves, particularly those that are put forward to investors as providing a diversified exposure to risk factors, which many did not. In this webcast we shed light on why factor investing in its common form and in particular multi-factor portfolios may not deliver investors the balanced risk exposures and diversification effects, that they typically hope to achieve or are promised to obtain by spreading their investments across multiple factors. We explore common implementations of multi-factor strategies revealing that many suffer from unwanted biases, then highlight the unintended consequences of these hidden biases.

– The intelligence that guides our investment decisions –

COVID-19, an unprecedented rate environment, and new zero-emissions targets are producing wildly divergent expectations across the real asset investment community.

Join Aviva Investors’ new chief investment officer for real assets, Daniel McHugh along with Chris Urwin, director of research, and Laurence Monnier, head of quantitative research, as they discuss the key themes identified by our Real Assets House View 2021 (https://www.avivainvestors.com/en-gb/views/real-assets-house-view/), that will shape real assets markets in the coming months:

• What will the impact of the zero rate environment in the UK & Europe be?
• Will new ways of living persist post-COVID-19, and how might they change the investment landscape?
• Which parts of the real assets universe look most promising for investors to target today?

Presented by:
• Daniel McHugh - Chief Investment Officer, Real Assets, Aviva Investors
• Chris Urwin - Director of Research, Real Assets, Aviva Investors
• Laurence Monnier – Head of Quantitative Research, Real Assets, Aviva Investors

Moderated by: Brendan Maton, IPE

A road to recovery - investment opportunities andchallenges post-Covid 19

Real estate is one of the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions, making the road to net zero carbon difficult to navigate.

And yet, Nuveen Real Estate plans to be net zero carbon by 2040 – ten years ahead of when the World Green Building Council states it is necessary to meet the Paris Accord.

Abigail Dean, Nuveen Real Estate’s Head of Strategic Insights, discusses their pathway to net zero carbon and shares best practices for achieving this goal.

Highlights include:

– A building-specific approach
– An enterprise-wide pathway
– Local and regional insights from around the globe
– The need for industry collaboration and innovation
– Net zero carbon’s challenges and ambiguities

Measuring, reporting and validating progress to net zero carbon is one of those challenges. GRESB’s Climate Change Specialist Erik Landry joins Abigail to explore the need for reliable ESG information, standardised global benchmarks and collective action in the real estate industry.

Die Renditen der Staatsanleihen von Industrieländern haben im Jahr 2020 Rekordtiefs erreicht, die „Japanisierung“ der Eurozone ist dabei nach Ansicht vieler Marktanalysten in vollem Gange. Nicht zuletzt auch aufgrund des Anleihekaufprogramms der EZB sind selbst die Renditen zahlreicher südeuropäischer Anleihen auf unter 0% gefallen. Welche Möglichkeiten bleibt für institutionelle Anleger sich im Fixed Income Sektor zu positionieren? Im Rahmen unseres Webinars „Ideen für das Fixed Income Portfolio 2021“ wollen wir über verschiedene Sub-Assetklassen bzw. Investmentstrategien sprechen, die im gegenwärtigen Nullzinsumfeld einen Mehrwert für das Portfolio liefern können.

Das Webinar findet am Mittwoch den 17. März 2021 von 14.00 bis 15.15 Uhr statt.

Beiträge kommen von Insight Investment, Vontobel Asset Management und State Street Global Advisors.

AGENDA
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Einleitung und Themenübersicht
Frank Schnattinger, Chefredakteur, IPE D.A.CH
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Convertibles – The Long and the Short of it
Sabrina Jacobs, Investment Specialist Fixed Income,
Insight Investment
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Vorteile eines aktiven Ansatzes in Schwellenländeranleihen in Hartwährung
Dr. Wouter Van Overfelt, Head of Emerging Markets Corporate Bonds & Portfolio Manager,
Vontobel Asset Management

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Why indexed high yield is the next frontier in the battleground between active and passive approaches in fixed income
David Furey, Head of Fixed Income Portfolio Strategy Group EMEA,
State Street Global Advisors

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Q&A

Analysis of global markets, Taper Tantrums and inflation risks in 2021.

Join senior members of our Global Investment Research team for analysis on global equity and fixed income markets, as they confront a possible inflation shock, and QE taper. They will assess, to quote Keynes, “what average opinion expects average opinion to be“ and the tail risks, negative and positive.

Our presenters will examine drivers of risk appetite, including:

• Growth and inflation expectations
• Financial conditions
• The profit and valuation cycle
• Factor rotation
• The status of market sentiment.

Throughout the discussion—moderated by Brendan Maton, IPE—you can submit questions.

ESG objectives rely heavily on data, which can be unreliable and limited. Not addressing this fundamental issue threatens investors’ ESG portfolio objectives. In this webinar, the President of Intech’s International Division, David Schofield, and Dr. Vassilios Papathanakos, Deputy CIO, will discuss:

– What are the main challenges that ESG data present?
– What are effective practices to overcome these challenges?
– How can ESG portfolio objectives be reliably targeted?

Economic disruption and market uncertainty pervades today, but most institutional investors are committed to building up their exposure to real assets on a global basis. Investors still need to allocate capital to strategies that can deliver stable returns and diversification.

Pursuing global allocations is all the more challenging today and so there is an even greater need among investors for on-the-ground intelligence on specific regions and markets. The IPE Real Assets Global Virtual Forums is designed to meet this need, providing up-to-date insight into regional real assets markets and to highlight emerging opportunities and investment strategies that can perform through the current global crisis.

Between February 19, 2020 and March 23, 2020, the S&P 500 crashed almost 35%. The speed and ferocity of the selloff was shocking and caught many market participants unaware. As did the recovery when the S&P 500 surged more than 60% in just over five months. In the economic aftermath, various corporate sectors are facing significant financial hardship and many markets globally are as volatile as they have been in generations. All of which leaves institutional investors across the world with the responsibility of anticipating and planning for what may come next.

Join our panel of experts to hear how they reacted to the volatility of 2020 and what they would do differently in the next market crisis.

Presented by:
– Rich Donnellan – Director, Institutional Investors, Nasdaq Asset Owner Solutions
– Soo Kobberstad - Portfolio Manager, Head of Credit, LPPI
– Tony Yiu - Director of Quantitative Research & Development, Solovis

Moderated by: Brendan Maton: IPE

Forestry provides a multifaceted solution in the drive towards net zero economies, and one that is increasingly relevant for institutional investors looking to combine sustainable long-term returns with inherent environmental and social benefits. Carbon absorption and storage by forests is recognised in the Paris Agreement as a key part of the solution to climate change.

Carbon forestry has emerged as a new investment sector which contributes directly towards the target to reduce emissions through commercial reforestation or the development of new permanent forests not harvested for commercial timber, but instead producing new carbon credits. Returns from carbon forestry are accretive to conventional timberland returns and uncorrelated to other asset classes.

For conventional timberland, the benefits of using timber and timber products in place of environmental damaging alternatives will assume ever greater importance in our transition towards a low carbon economy and are expected to drive further timber price growth.

To incentivise and achieve the goal of limiting temperature increases to between 1.5°C and 2°C, global economies must combine the use of carbon credits, allowing a transitionary period, with the development of new technologies and practices to significantly reduce carbon emissions.

These pathways to net zero are creating an exciting new frontier for Forestry investors.

Join experts from Forestry investment specialists Gresham House Asset Management, The Pension Protection Fund and the PRI as they share their insights into Forestry as a sustainable and commercial asset class and discuss the unique opportunity for institutional investors in 2021 and beyond.

Presented by:
Olly Hughes, Managing Director, Forestry - Gresham House
David Gardner, CIO, Forestry - Gresham House
Lea Dubourg-Hrachovec, Portfolio Manager Alternatives - Pension Protection Fund
Simon Whistler, Senior Specialist, Investment Practices - PRI

Moderator: Brendan Maton, IPE

– Beyond EU Paris-Aligned Benchmark Compliance –

A growing number of investors seek to play their part in the fight against climate change by investing in low carbon and climate scenario alignment strategies.

The regulation defining the requirements for recognition as EU Paris-aligned Benchmark pursues alignment through weighted average carbon intensity reduction and activity-based exclusions.

However, reducing the average carbon intensity of a financial portfolio does not necessarily lead to progress in terms of alignment.

In this webinar we will therefore discuss the following questions:
- How can investors effectively incentivise companies to act on climate change?
- How to align investment decisions with engagement ambitions?
- How to integrate alignment criteria beyond current carbon intensity?
- What are the implications for targets, constraints, metrics and data in the context of portfolio construction?
- How to make sure capital is reallocated over time in line with companies’ decarbonisation pledges and achievements?

Speakers:
Erik Christiansen, ESG & Low Carbon Investment Specialist, Scientific Beta
Frédéric Ducoulombier, ESG Director, Scientific Beta

Moderator: Brendan Maton, IPE