Luncheon Briefing Co-organised with the Hong Kong Retirement Schemes Association

Tuesday, 21st January 2003
JW Marriott Hotel
Pacific Place, Hong Kong

Invitation

Post briefing materials:

Speaker & Presentation:
Tessa Tennant, Executive Chair, ASrIA
	723 KB	Sustainable and Responsible Investment - Developments Overseas and its Relevance to Hong Kong

Summary

The HKRSA organised a luncheon briefing for Tessa to speak on "Sustainable and Responsible Investment - Developments Overseas and its Relevance to Hong Kong". The audience was made up of approximately 40 HKRSA members from the investment community and other guests. Given the attendees, Tessa focused on developments in pension schemes in other parts of the world and why SRI would be a relevent investment strategy for Hong Kong's own Mandatory Provident Scheme (MPF). She introduced SRI as an investment methodology and its critical nature given the dire environmental and social prognosis for our planet. She explained the importance of 'investor governance' in considering wider issues when making investments and in being an active shareholder encouraging corporate change. She also highlighted the business case for SRI as an investment option. Then she explained how pension schemes in the UK, Australia, Sweden and the US have amended their legislation or practices over recent years to increase the integration of SRI and good governance criteria into their investment practices. See the attached presentation for details on policy and other changes in these countries. In particular she explained how the introduction of the 401K program in the US was a driver for the adoption of SRI as individuals were given the opportunity to think about their investment choices for the long term. She related this to Hong Kong and the importance of the MPF scheme for developing SRI in Asia. If Hong Kong people knew more about SRI investment options and there were more options available, a similar high growth trend of SRI to that in the US might be possible. She also highlighted the fact that Hong Kong has many active environmentalists, religious groups and people in the caring professions who would be typical SRI investors based on those in other parts of the world. They just need to be educated about the importance of good investor governance in driving for broader change. ASrIA is working on this type of education and is keen to work with other organistions to achieve this.