ASSET4 in the News
Getting an outside perspective on things is often useful. The links below are to stories and articles written by the media and should help you learn more about us and our approach.
World's Largest Stock Exchange Will Provide ESG Information to Its Listed Companies
from SocialFunds.com, May 2009
Collaboration of NYSE Euronext and ASSET4 will provide companies listed on the exchange with access to ASSET4's database of ESG information on 2,800 of the world's largest companies.
The argument that consideration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues is essential in order to build a sustainable recovery from the current economic crisis—an argument advanced by sustainability investors and others—received significant corporate support recently, when NYSE Euronext, the world's largest exchange group, announced a collaboration with ASSET4, a Swiss-based investment research information provider that provides information on ESG aspects of corporate performance.
To read the complete article, click here.
Eine Idee mit Zukunft
Interview with Peter Ohnemus, Connected , February 2009
connected: Wieso ignorieren immer noch viele Unternehmensführer die häufig bewiesene Tatsache, dass nachhaltiges Unternehmertum grosse finanzielle Vorteile bringt?
Peter Ohnemus: Viele Unternehmensführer gehören der «klassischen» Schule an, das heisst, sie richten sich sehr stark nach Werten wie P/E, Cashflow usw. Unterdessen gilt es als Tatsache, dass der Wert von börsenkotierten Unternehmen zu 70 bis 80 Prozent aus nichtklassischen Werten besteht, also aus Extrafinanzwerten wie ESG-(Environmental, Social und Corporate Governance)Performance. Heute ist es aber interessant zu sehen, dass viele
der jüngeren CEOs Nachhaltigkeit als Vorteil gegenüber der Konkurrenz betrachten. Dies zeigt sich in einer klareren Profilierung im Bereich von CSR und ESG.
To read the entire interview in German, click here.
For the entire magazine in German, click here.
Das Weiche macht die Stärke aus
from Handelszeitung, November 2008
In der Krise gibt es auch Gewinner. Die "Handelszeitung" stellt heute den Zuger Corporate-Governance-Dienstleister ASSET4 vor. Er ist Weltmarktführer für die Analyse und Verbreitung von Daten zu socialen Anlagen.
To read the entire article in German, click here.
Doing the right thing
from International Finance Review, October 2008
One of the strongest drivers to increase corporate responsibility has been the emergence of an increasingly activist and socially conscious investor. What began as a few niche religious investment groups and concerned individual investors has snowballed into a much broader trend, attracting money from investors of all stripes -- including those who are motivated purely by returns.
To read the complete article, click here.
Fortune partners with AccountAbility, Csrnetwork and ASSET4 to rank the world's 100 most accountable companies
from Fortune, November 2008
On November 14th 2008, Fortune magazine published its annual ranking of business responsibility, also known as the Accountability Rating. ASSET4 delivered the data that was used for the analysis of the companies. The rating itself was produced by AccountAbility (www.accountability21.net) and the csrnetwork (www.csrnetwork.com).
The ranking illustrates the quality of the companies’ commitment to social and environmental goals. The leading company is Vodafone followed by General Electric, HSBC Holdings, France Telecom and HBOS.
To read an article discussing each of the top 10 companies, click here.
To see the complete list of 100 companies, click here.
To read about the methodology, click here.
Legal 'certainty' needed over pension funds' ESG duty
from IPE Online, May 2008
Pension funds are calling for "legal certainty" over how sustainable development affects their fiduciary duty along with improvements to the quality of long-term sustainability information provided in company reports, a study commissioned by ASSET4 and the German government has revealed.
The study, entitled 'Long-term and sustainable pension investments: a study of leading European pension funds', was conducted by Dr Axel Hesse, and highlights evidence suggesting while pension funds are clearly long-term investors, they are making "insufficient use" of long-term research into sustainable development.
That said, the respondents – from 10 of Europe's largest pension funds and asset managers with more than €460bn assets under management – claimed while long-term information supplied by companies was slightly better than from specialist research companies, there was a "strong need for catching-up" in relation to providing investors with "materially important sustainability information".
To read the entire article, please click here.
ASSET4 Enriches Risk Assessment
from BusinessWeek Online, April 2008
"While not easily quantified or strictly predictive, such nonfinancial information is becoming increasingly important to investors trying to pick where to place their bets. Whether it's corporate governance, environmental exposure, labor policies, or community relations, these "softer" factors can play as large a role as return on equity or capitalization ratios in the future performance of a company and its stock."
"Hungry for help sorting out these issues, asset managers, banks, and hedge funds are turning to a European pioneer called Asset4, based in Zug, Switzerland . . ."
To read the entire article, please click here.
Nobel Prize winner references ASSET in new book
from Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner)
Mr. Yunus writes, "ASSET4, a research firm, has created a set of over 250 'extra-financial' indicators on which it tracks almost 1,500 companies [now 2,000] on behalf of institutional investor clients. For each company it monitors, ASSET4 produces an economic rating, an environmental rating, a social rating, and a governance rating (the last of these evaluates a company's decision-making processes to determine whether they are designed to ensure responsible corporate behavior)," page 176.
"ASSET4 [is] . . . designed for use by profit-seeking investors who are looking for companies that are both 'economically successful' and 'socially responsible' to invest in," page 177.
Click here to order the book from Amazon.com.
Financial Times discusses Environmental Investing
from Financial Times, February 2008
In a Special Report on Environmental Investing published February 4, 2008, the Financial Times highlighted ASSET4 in the article entitled, “Company analysis proves a lucrative business.” The article discusses the growing use of ESG information by pension funds and mainstream investor firms like Goldman Sachs.
Click here to download a PDF of the article.
Click here to be taken to the entire FT Special Report.
Sustainable Assets show results
from Finanz und Wirtschaft, December 2007
To read the entire article, please click here. Please note that the article is written in German.
The 2007 Accountability Rating is built on ASSET4 data
from Fortune, November 2007
On November 12th 2007, Fortune magazine published The 2007 Accountability Rating. ASSET4 delivered the data that was used for the analysis of the companies. The rating itself was produced by AccountAbility (www.accountability21.net) and the csrnetwork (www.csrnetwork.com).
The ranking illustrates the effectiveness of the world’s largest companies in managing corporate social responsibility issues. The leading company is BP followed by Barclays, ENI, HSBC Holdings and Vodafone.
To read the entire article, please click here.
ASSET4 in CASHdaily TV
from CASHdaily TV, October 2007
On October 8th 2007, CASH daily TV did an interview with Peter Ohnemus and Henrik Steffensen. During the interview, they are talking about the objectives of ASSET4 and the changes of today's world.
To watch the CASHdaily interview, please click here. Please note that the interview is in German.
Setting new standards for the financial industry
from cashdaily.ch, October 2007
On October 8th 2007, cashdaily.ch published an article about how ASSET4 is helping to set new standards for the financial industry. Peter Ohnemus, CEO and President of ASSET4, says in the article that he wants to prove with ASSET4 that sustainably managed companies will provide superior long-term share performance.
To read the entire article, please click here. Please note that the article is written in German.
How to Count What You Can’t See
from www.portfolio.com, September 2007
For a growing number of companies, their reputation is worth far more than their physical assets. A new firm focuses on what those reputations are really worth.
It's one of the primary rules of entrepreneurialism: To be successful, a business needs to help address a problem. From that perspective, Peter Ohnemus and his company, ASSET4, are off to a good start.
They're going after pretty much everything that ails us, from global warming to child labor to excessive executive pay. Better yet, there are already a few trillion dollars betting that Ohnemus knows what he's doing. So why have you never heard of him?
Because Ohnemus, who was born in Denmark and lives in Switzerland, isn't actually out to directly solve the problems facing humanity. Instead, he's focused on helping investors figure out how to incorporate such considerations into the way they evaluate the companies they invest in. But here's the thing: If his idea catches on, it might just have the same ultimate effect. If no one invests in companies that don't have a social conscience, they'll be hard-pressed to keep the doors open and the lights on for long.
Ohnemus, a serial entrepreneur, admits that the motivation behind Asset4 was as much selfishness as it was a desire to make the world a better place. Since 1993, when he sold a database company, SQL, to Sybase, he'd either built or been involved with three other companies that went public. By the turn of the century, he found himself preoccupied with what you might call a high-class problem: how to invest the substantial wealth he'd accumulated to that point. Around that time, he came across a book that instilled in him both a sense of dread for the planet as well as an idea for a new business. The tome is High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them by Jean-François Rischard, the chief economist for the World Bank. "It's a scary book," Ohnemus says. "I read it twice in one week. And then I called Henrik Steffensen, my co-founder, and told him I had an idea for a new company. We would create the Bloomberg for extra-financial data."
Investors, says Ohnemus, have no shortage of providers of financial information from the usual suspects: Bloomberg, Reuters, Thomson, Standard & Poor's, and more. What they don't have, he argues, is a reliable source for everything else that matters about a company-intangible assets like reputation, environmental policy, and a commitment to workplace safety.
A 2002 study of the drivers of public market value shows just how important intangibles have become over time. In 1982, 62 percent of the public market value of the world's 150 largest companies could be attributed to their tangible assets-things like their buildings, inventory, and equipment. By 1999, the proportion had fallen to a mere 16 percent, leaving a full 84 percent of a company's value reliant on intangible inputs such as patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property, as well as its environmental, social, and corporate governance practices.
It's those last three that Ohnemus and his team have set their focus on. And it's made their sales pitch about as easy as can be: Who in their right mind would try to determine a fair value for a stock using just 16 percent of the necessary inputs? And so, in August 2003, Ohnemus and Steffensen founded ASSET4, which is based in Zug, Switzerland. Today, the company has 200 employees in six global offices, and has attracted a very prominent firm as both investor and customer: Goldman Sachs.
Ohnemus and his team have identified what they refer to as four pillars of corporate performance: economic, environmental, social, and corporate governance. The latter three make up the extra-financial component, and Ohnemus refers to them as ESG's.
The platform produces a total of 900 unique data points for each company analyzed. It can produce a range of tailored reports on companies or industries, as well as reports on categories or indicators across the universe of 3,500 companies in the MSCI World Index. Data points and indicators collected by ASSET4 analysts run the gamut of nonfinancial aspects of the life of a business: animal testing, consumer complaints, energy footprint, the female-to-male employee ratio, pay practices, political contributions, staff turnover, and even noise reduction.
To date, Ohnemus' customers include Goldman, UBS, Swiss Re, the Pension Fund of New Jersey, and Shell Asset Management. All-in, he estimates that trillions of investment dollars are either directly or indirectly using the ASSET4 model. And it might just get easier from here. The more people come to value some input, the more that will be reflected in the public value of companies, which will probably lead to investors' coming to value that input even more.
It's already happening. In October of 2006, for example, Goldman Sachs released a 105-page report on the global energy industry that made extensive use of ASSET4 data and noted that "winners" in an ESG framework had outperformed their peers by 6 percent since August 2005. "We believe the strong relationship between ESG leaders and stock market performance will persist," the bank's analysts wrote.
Bank Sarasin, a Swiss private bank that in 1994 launched the world's first investment fund based on the concepts of eco-efficiency, has also chosen to integrate ASSET4 data into its own research. Dr. Eckhard Plinke, head of sustainability research at Bank Sarasin, says that the sheer number of companies covered by ASSET4 makes the database valuable, as well as the ability to customize the information for the bank's own in-house rating systems. "Those are major advantages for us," he says.
With those who argue that the most important thing a company must do is-and always will be-to make money, Ohnemus doesn't entirely disagree. "I'm a capitalist," he says. "I believe the business of business is to do business. But if consumers start to dictate that they want companies to behave in a certain way, business is going to have to start caring about that as well."
Investors, it seems, already have. An index of top-ranked companies in the ASSET4 model outperformed the MSCI World Index by 67.1 percent from July of 2000 through July of 2005. The following year, that margin expanded to a full 84.8 percent. The inescapable conclusion is that the market already cares about things other than the bottom line, and investors who fail to do so themselves do so at their own peril.
Evaluating a company
from Neue Luzerner Zeitung, June 2007
On June 19th 2007, the Swiss newspaper "Neue Luzerner Zeitung" published an article about how ASSET4 is helping investors evaluate company performance. The text describes that ASSET4 offers a wide range of environmental, social and governance data on companies, enabling investors to see how firms are performing in the area of environmental and social responsibility for example. In addition, the article discusses the fact that 84% of the total corporate value is actually based on extra-financial data.
To read the entire article, please click here. Please note that the article is in German.
Huge Sustainability Business
from CASH, May 2007
On May 16th 2007, the Swiss newspaper "CASH" published an article about the importance of sustainability in today’s business world. The text describes that ASSET4 wants to become the number one provider of business sustainability data. In addition, the article includes an interview with Dr. Plinke from Bank Sarasin, who discusses how now that they have access to the ASSET4 data, they have more time to concentrate on their investment analysis.
To read the entire article, please click here. Please note that the article is in German.
Re-examining the Fundamentals
from FSR, April 2007
The April 2007 edition of the magazine Financial Services Research (FSR) includes an interview with Henrik Steffensen, Vice President Marketing and Business Development at ASSET4.
In this article FSR discusses with Mr. Steffensen the changing attitudes within the investment community toward ESG factors in the last two years, while also discussing the ASSET4 framework and company history. The article points out that not only SRI investors are interested in this data, but hedge funds as well, who are able to plug the ASSET4 data into their own quantitative models in order to improve risk adjusted returns and to identify a connection between ESG and financial performance. In addition, a recent study showing the correlation between ESG criteria and the future performance of firms is also described. To conclude the article, FSR writes, “ASSET4 is striving for leadership in close cooperation with professional investors, recognising that the mainstreaming of ESG across their organisations can be an avenue for reducing risk, improving alpha, enhancing beta and offering quality products.“
To read the entire article, please click here.
Analysing the Influence of ESG Factors
from Finanz und Wirtschaft, February 2007
A recent edition of “Finanz und Wirtschaft“ (a widely read Swiss newspaper focused on the finance industry and the economy) published an analysis of the influence of (ESG) environmental, social and governance factors on stock performance.
In the article, Dr. Weber used a statistical algorithm to analyse the effectiveness of ESG factors in forecasting corporate performance. He chose 160 companies of the MSCI world index. Based on the ASSET4 data, he created an algorithm and divided the companies into two portfolios, one containing the half with the best rankings and the other one containing the half with the bottom rankings. The corporate performance of the two portfolios was then computed over the following four years. In 2005, the top 80 achieved a 59.7% better performance than the others.
Overall, the article helps to demonstrate the materiality of ESG factors on stock performance, and how the ASSET4 system can assist one in tracking those factors.
To read the entire article, please click here. Please note that the article is published in German.
Measuring Corporate Conscience
from Red Herring, December 2006
In the December edition of Red Herring is a wide-ranging interview of the ASSET4 Founder, CEO and President, Peter Ohnemus and Henrik Steffensen the ASSET4 Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.
The article provides an overview of how "ASSET4’s monitoring of non-financial factors catches on with investors." It also discusses the history of the company, its current partnership with Goldman Sachs and its future plans to cover "70 percent of the world’s mainstream trading market." A number of the key factors that are making ESG issues so important at this moment are also discussed, such as environmental pressures on companies and the increasing competitive pressure on large institutional investors to improve performance.
To read the entire article, please download a version here.
Driving the Outcome
from Investment & Pensions Europe, March 2006
In the March edition of Investment & Pensions Europe, writer Martin Hurst provides an overview of the ASSET4 solution in his article entitled, "Driving the outcome."
He writes, "As the lines between intangibles - environmental policy for example - and corporate performance are strengthened so it is clear that they also are generating an increasingly large portion of corporate growth and shareholder value. This explains the increasing demand for information about these aspects of corporate activity, from the investment managers and their institutional investor clients to the corporations which are the focus of their attention."
To read the entire article, please download a version here. (PDF 1MB)