Robeco press release

Posted on July 9th, 2018

Leeds, Monday 9 July 2018 – Border to Coast Pensions Partnership (“Border to Coast”), one of the largest UK public sector pension pools, has selected Robeco, the international asset manager, following a thorough procurement process, to perform its voting and engagement services.

Robeco’s Active Ownership service enables institutional investors to meet their fiduciary responsibility and become active owners of listed companies through voting and engagement. Robeco votes at shareholder meetings and engages with the senior management of listed companies on behalf of its clients to encourage organisations to adopt long-term, sustainable business practices.

As part of achieving its objective to make a difference to long-term investment outcomes for its Partner Funds, Border to Coast was looking for an experienced partner with similar values to work with to ensure active ownership across all its investments, both internally and externally managed. Border to Coast has also recently become a member of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum as well as a signatory to Climate Action 100+, and supporter of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and 30% Club Investor Group. Border to Coast is looking to work with these partners to strengthen its ability to influence change in its priority engagement areas.

Rachel Elwell, CEO, Border to Coast said:

“We are strong advocates of Responsible Investment and holding companies to account on environmental, social and governance issues. This is central to Border to Coast’s corporate and investment ethos and a key part of delivering our Partner Funds’ objectives.
We were impressed by Robeco’s breadth of engagement across all asset classes and geographies, especially in emerging markets and Asia, and by their level of detailed research and analysis. It was also important to us that this analysis could be incorporated into our own investment processes and 1 philosophy. We are looking forward to working with Robeco in the years to come as we look to understand and measure how active ownership makes a difference to investment outcomes.”

Peter Walsh, Head of Robeco UK added:

“We are incredibly pleased to be working with Border to Coast on their active ownership programme. Winning this mandate builds on our solid traction in the local government pension fund sector and will add further momentum to our Active Ownership team and strengthen our local sustainability investing profile.”

Robeco votes at about 5,000 shareholder meetings each year, focusing on high-profile cases such as remuneration, mergers & acquisitions, significant holdings, companies under engagement and environmental, social and governance issues. Robeco uses a proprietary assessment framework and will also analyze voting research, gather input from investment managers and review sustainability reports, annual reports and news items.

Ends

Media enquiries

Montfort Communications Gay Collins/Toto Reissland-Burghart	robeco@montfort.london +44 (0) 7798 626282 +44 (0) 203 770 7907
Border to Coast Pensions Partnership Ltd. Rachel Elwell – Chief Executive Officer	rachel.elwell@bordertocoast.org.uk +44 (0) 1134 872 514

Notes to editors

Border to Coast will invest the assets of the Bedfordshire, Cumbria, Durham, East Riding, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Surrey, South Yorkshire, Teesside, Tyne and Wear and Warwickshire LGPS pension funds totalling £43 billion. It is based in Leeds.
Further details can be found at https://www.bordertocoast.org.uk/

Robeco is a pure play international asset manager which has EUR 165 billion in assets under
management (March 2018).

Through its unique integration of fundamental, sustainable and quantitative research, Robeco offers both institutional and private investors an extensive range of active investment strategies covering a broad range of asset classes. It was founded in 1929 and currently has offices in 15 countries around the world and is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Robeco is a subsidiary of ORIX Corporation Europe N.V. which has assets under management of EUR 289 billion (March 2018).

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