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Leader in active quantitative equities across Australian equities, global equities, emerging markets and global small companies.
Backed by a unique blend of research, portfolio construction and risk management, focused on uncovering original insights and translating them into investment strategies that are active and systematic, aiming to generate alpha.
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At Stewart Investors, we believe in putting people first. Our investment world-view is of a series of partnerships – with each other, with our clients, with the companies we invest in, the people who buy their goods and services, and with the wider society in which we all live and work.
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We aim to contribute to a sustainable economy and society by improving our environmental, social and governance standards. We aim to hold our own business to the same standards that we expect of the companies we invest our clients’ capital in. By doing so, we reinforce our position as responsible investors.
Leading global asset manager, First Sentier Investors (FSI), has strengthened its responsible investment (RI) and corporate sustainability capabilities with three new appointments.
First Sentier Investors launches the Sustainable Investment Institute
We believe that organisations have legal, moral and commercial obligations to respect human rights and remediate any implications on human rights in their operations and supply chains.
Investors are underestimating Unilever’s sustainability success story. Responsible capitalism model has delivered for investors and society
We know we need to pivot our approach if we are to minimise the environmental impacts of our business operations, no matter where our offices are based. In March 2022, we announced a firm-wide target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across our business operations in line with a target of net zero emissions by 2030 (or sooner).
We are committed to fostering an inclusive and equitable culture where diversity can thrive. We believe this will deliver better outcomes for our people, our clients and society, and it is the right thing to do.
Read regular news updates, research papers, investment strategy updates and thought pieces from our leading investment experts.
Making a difference to the communities where we live, work and invest through philanthropy has been a focus for our business for over a decade. This is also an important part of our corporate value of ‘care’ to societies in which we operate. The First Sentier Foundation is our philanthropic initiative, founded in 2012 and dedicated to building sustainable lives through education.
With the support of MUFG Bank, Ltd., (MUFG Bank), First Sentier Investors has launched a private debt capability focused initially on loans to the renewable energy sector.
This letter forms the first in a series designed to introduce and explain our approach to sustainability, and the lessons learned so far. We hope that these reflections, drawing on the team’s combined experience, will provide a useful insight.
Most investment professionals believe that neither ESG nor long-term factors are efficiently priced by markets. Around 75% believe that investors are over sensitive to short-term factors. A similar number believe that risks and opportunities associated with ESG externalities are not being captured in market value
Leading global investment manager, First Sentier Investors, today announced the launch of its Responsible Listed Infrastructure Fund (the Fund) to Australian institutional and wholesale investors.
We believe financial markets, critical to society’s ability to function, are under threat. For too long, it has been widely accepted that short-term performance, growth, risks and financial returns should be maximised at the expense of environmental and social outcomes.
Emerging markets are usually seen as a risky asset class. Recent headlines of protests, currency devaluations and governance blow-ups have done little to dispel these impressions.
First Sentier Investors today announced unit holders have voted in favour of a change in responsible entity (RE) for a number of funds from Colonial First State to The Trust Company.
First Sentier Investors (FSI), a leading global investment manager today announced new Director of the Sustainable Investment Institute
Australia currently has a unique opportunity to set up a framework that can support investment aligned with the nation’s sustainability goals, by means of the Australian Sustainable Finance Strategy (“the Strategy”).
Leading global investment manager, First Sentier Investors (FSI), has appointed Kate Turner as Global Head of Responsible Investment (RI) and bolstered its RI team with four new appointments.
An exploration of the obligations and capacity of the Funds Management industry to fulfil social purposes.
American Listed Infrastructure (ALI) has seen a significant increase in Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity. Private market and foreign corporate buyers are paying premiums of 25% to listed markets, often for non-controlling stakes. This M&A illustrates the intrinsic value available to investors in the ALI asset class. We expect M&A will continue for a number of years. This will deleverage balance sheets, reduce equity needs and recycle capital from non-core to core activities, thereby raising the quality of the ALI asset class.
Many listed infrastructure companies provide customers with cleaner and greener services than the alternatives. This paper looks at how US-listed railroads, electric and water utilities are reducing carbon emissions, improving safety and increasing customer satisfaction. We believe these sustainability benefits are going to be valued more highly in the future by customers, regulators, politicians and investors.
First Sentier Investors rebrands its direct infrastructure business to Igneo Infrastructure Partners
First Sentier Investors Group (FSI), a leading global investment manager, today announced its direct infrastructure investment team will now be named Igneo Infrastructure Partners. The establishment of Igneo Infrastructure Partners is part of FSI’s long-term growth strategy to build a global business consisting of in-house investment teams and independently-branded investment teams, offering a range of investment expertise across differentiated asset classes.
When it comes to sustainable investment in the Asia-Pacific region, there can be some ethical concerns. In this foreign world of investing, concepts of 'short-termism' and 'metric fixation' may be the culprits for some of these practices.
We consider the tax rates paid by companies that we might invest in on behalf of our clients important because it impacts our assessment of Quality of Management, Franchise and Financials.
We pose the question – what if we could develop a way of predicting which companies are more likely to be suffering distress, and which were not? The idea contains three parts: A. Certain individual observations or metrics can separately tell us about stocks that might – in the near future – find themselves in trouble. B. If we combine enough of these metrics together – without overfitting – we can get synergy between the factors. C. If we build a smart model that is designed specifically to target corporate distress, then we can apply and refine the predictions from the metrics in a better way.
Government fiscal and debt metrics are strong but pro-growth fiscal policy risks deterioration. At the point they are forced into using fiscal buffers, the market will have repriced the risk sharply.
In almost every meeting that we have with management teams, we will ask about incentivisation. In our view, it is an important question and the answer can be highly revealing about an organisation’s culture and behaviour. While it can be easy to be deceived by articulate CEOs talking up a big game with lots of investor-friendly buzzwords, in our experience what ultimately drives outcomes (at least the ones that management teams can influence) are the incentives. As with most things, striking the right balance is key. If there are no incentives to good performance (and no disincentive for poor performance), companies often end up with capital being systematically mis-allocated without any accountability. This tends to be the case with most State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), which is one of the reasons we are generally cautious on them. On the other hand, too much of a good thing can also have adverse consequences, which we often see in turbo-charged incentive schemes concentrated among just a few senior executives. While they might lead to exponential growth for a short period of time, the growth is usually not sustainable. After a rapid period of expansion, imbalances are typically built up and when growth inevitably slows it is usually not just one skeleton that falls out of the closet.
Climate related litigation against directors and trustees is increasing globally. As the science around climate change evolves, how companies prepare for and manage these issues will be increasingly in the spotlight. As climate impacts grow, so do the duties, risks and implications for both companies and investors. Below is a brief summary of the fourth Climate Change Whitepaper – Fiduciary & Directors duties and legal risks for companies.
Over the last 5 years, China has been on the rise within the Emerging Markets. We have all heard the story of the China Dragon and the impressive growth that the Chinese economy has been able to achieve relative to other large economies since the early 1990s. Even more recently as its growth has reduced it is still achieving more than double the growth of the United States. We believe the increase in regulatory risk from both the US and domestically in China has been a large contributor to this fall. The question for investors is this: will it continue and where does the next risk lie?
We recently spent several weeks in the US visiting listed infrastructure management teams, regulators, politicians, industry associations and conducting asset tours. The following paper provides an overview of our findings.
We crossed six US states meeting over 70 infrastructure management teams as well as customers and suppliers at three conferences. We visited three corporate head offices, several regulators and toured the country’s largest nuclear power plant.
2024 was a year marked by global inflation and economic growth concerns against a backdrop of worldwide elections. As we head into 2025, volatility will remain an enduring constant.
Though Covid hasn’t yet finished with us, the markets have finished with Covid. In real life, there is still plenty of misery to go around, but in our opinion things have seldom been better for investors. Optimism has served us well, as the money-printing presses have rolled to counter the “unprecedented” threat. In investment, perhaps it is better to be a stupid optimist than a clever pessimist. And, we believe markets do indeed go up most of the time.
After decades of flat electricity demand for US utilities, the industry is now seeing unprecedented demand as growth in data centers / AI, electrification, onshoring and electric vehicles outweighs energy efficiency gains. One utility executive stated: “Seeing all these customers wanting 24/7 load and willing to pay for it – it is every utility’s dream”.
Characterised by periods of drought, fire and flood, the Australian climate is becoming drier over the long term. A growing population is almost completely reliant on a single, unpredictable source of water – rainfall. Danny Latham, Partner, Unlisted Infrastructure at First Sentier Investors, explores the opportunities for private investment in Australia’s water sector.
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