Partners Capital Sustainable Investing Solutions

A white and navy blue illustration of a globe, depicting continents like North America, South America, Europe, and Africa on a grid background, subtly evokes the theme of sustainable investing.

Authentic ESG integration helps us to make better investment decisions for our clients. We believe that by assessing our asset managers’ ESG integration approaches, engaging with them to improve their practices and by the deployment of capital into impactful opportunities, we can help to generate better long-term investment outcomes for our clients and have a positive impact on society and the environment.

Partners Capital Sustainability Beliefs

Sustainability starts with the principles we embrace in managing our own firm

Sustainability starts with the principles we embrace in managing our own firm

  • Operational carbon net neutrality commitment in 2022
  • Commitment to reduce travel, efficient energy usage and recycling
  • Charitable giving and volunteering programme for environmental and social causes
Inclusive workplaces with diverse teams and perspectives make better decisions

Inclusive workplaces with diverse teams and perspectives make better decisions

  • CEO Pledge signatory since 2020 to further advance diversity, equity and inclusion 
  • Key Initiatives include: 1) educating employees to build an inclusive workplace; 2) engagement with third-party networks to diversify workforce
  • Focused effort to source diverse asset managers
Influence on asset managers behaviour represents our largest, leveraged impact

Influence on asset managers behaviour represents our largest, leveraged impact

  • Asset managers with whom we partner manage over $2T in assets, 40x the capital we oversee. Our beliefs are amplified through our partners
  • Working with these asset managers to implement best practice ESG integration processes can create real impact on our society and environment
Helping our clients implement targeted, bespoke responsible investment policies

Helping our clients implement targeted, bespoke responsible investment policies

  • Identify sectors, managers and companies capable of generating measurable impact
  • Raised a dedicated vehicle to invest in private equity opportunities focusing on proven technological innovations and long-established businesses which are critical to the global energy transition to net zero carbon emissions
ESG and Impact Measurement is the key to a virtuous circle of adoption

ESG and Impact Measurement is the key to a virtuous circle of adoption

  • Built proprietary ESG and Impact measurement dashboard, which has evolved with more sophisticated measurement techniques. 
  • Publish ESG and Impact annual report
  • Engage with asset managers to encourage greater transparency and consistency in ESG data
Collaboration with like-minded investors has the potential to catalyse change

Collaboration with like-minded investors has the potential to catalyse change

Partners Capital is the nexus of a powerful ecosystem where advocacy for sustainability can drive meaningful change:

Clients: prestigious charitable educational institutions and influential philanthropic families 
Shareholders: Sir Ronald Cohen offers us leading guidance on our sustainability and impact strategies
Asset Managers: partner with premier investment managers
Collaboration Groups: Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.  

What is ESG?

To fully understand the issues at hand and discuss the state of ESG in today’s world, we must take a step back and start with the basics. Let’s start with the simple question: ‘What is ESG?’ ESG refers to Environmental, Social and Governance factors, which is then abbreviated as ‘ESG’. The term, however, comprises more than just three loosely defined themes. ESG is much more granular than these three themes –  there is a multitude of “sub-themes” underneath each of the environmental, social and governance concepts, as shown in the categories here. This list is by no means exhaustive but it includes, in our view, the most referenced and essential ESG issues.

Sustainable Investing Policy

Partners Capital Sustainable Investing Policy is closely linked to our Sustainability Beliefs. These guide us in our mission to deliver the best long-term investment outcomes for our clients.  Read our full Partners Capital Sustainable Investing Policy.

Our Policy includes five pillars:

We assess the ESG integration and stewardship approaches of the asset managers with whom we partner through our ongoing communications and monitoring which is augmented by our annual Asset Manager Survey.

 

We seek to constructively engage with our asset managers to ensure they are deploying best practice integration and stewardship approaches.

 

We seek to generate additional returns and impact by allocating capital to those managers who have gained investment insights through integrating material ESG considerations and through allocating to companies and sectors who are contributing to and benefiting from sustainability trends.

 

We prefer engagement over exclusions with a belief that seeking to change behaviour is a more powerful means to have impact than exclusions. 

We collaborate with our clients, asset managers and leading capital owning institutions to support the acceptance and implementation of sustainable investing practices across the financial services industry. 

 

Partners Capital’s Dual Role in Sustainable Investing

Engagement with Asset Managers and how they are assessed
  • We engage with our asset managers to assess and improve their ESG integration, stewardship, and DEI approaches. The integration of financially material ESG factors alongside traditional fundamental analysis provides asset managers with a more comprehensive assessment of an investee.
  • We expanded our Asset Manager ESG Integration Survey in 2023, adding further emphasis on climate change and DEI. We received 190 manager responses across all asset classes, representing c. $44B of our overall AUM.
Deployment of ESG and Impact Investment Strategy
  • Where our clients have specific sustainability preferences, we support them in drafting of responsible investment policies and provide them with reporting to monitor compliance. Partners Capital can also source dedicated ESG and impact strategies for these client portfolios. 
  • We continued to deploy capital in our dedicated Private Equity Environmental Focussed Fund. Until the beginning of 2024, we have committed more than $100M to nine fund opportunities and two co-investments, resulting in diversified exposure across the fund’s six sectoral focus areas.

Team

Dr. Michael Viehs, dressed in a suit and tie, is smiling. With short, dark hair and glasses, he exudes professionalism against a plain white background.

The Sustainable Investing team, led by Dr. Michael Viehs, Global Head of Sustainable Investing, is responsible for developing and implementing Partners Capital’s approach to sustainable investing.

Currently, the team consists of five members who have a background in investing, research, client relationship management, ESG and sustainable investing.

Case Studies

Assisting a prominent UK health foundation manage a dedicated impact portfolio
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Assisting a prominent UK health foundation manage a dedicated impact portfolio


Since 2016, we have been assisting one of our UK-based charity clients to build a dedicated impact investment portfolio within their endowment. Our role includes investment and operational due diligence, execution and portfolio monitoring. In line with the charity’s mission, the impact portfolio also targets positive health impact. This impact is achieved by investing directly in healthcare opportunities, as well as funds that aim to improve broader determinants of health, such as affordable housing and community services. The portfolio is diversified across private equity, private debt, core property and public equity.

Engaging with a long-only global equity manager to launch an ex-tobacco fund
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Engaging with a long-only global equity manager to launch an ex-tobacco fund


In 2018, we started engaging with one of our long-only global equity managers employing a philosophy and process are focused on finding “high quality franchises”. As a result of this approach, the manager has always had structural and significant exposure to Tobacco, which was increasingly becoming an issue for a subset of our European institutional clients. Our engagement efforts culminated in the manager launching an ex-tobacco variant of their flagship strategy, which multiple Partners Capital clients switched into.