Press release – impak announces a strategic partnership with VEGA Investment Managers
Press release, Paris, the 10th of December, 2019
An innovative strategy to accelerate the environmental and social impact of listed equities.
VEGA Investment Managers, the asset management company, announces a strategic partnership with the leading impact rating start-up, impak Finance, in order to develop impact investing as a strategy in the near future*
*Subject to the approval of the French “Autorité des Marchés Financiers”
Thanks to this partnership, VEGA Investment Managers becomes a pioneer in impact investing and builds on the Socially Responsible Investing approach it kick started in 2018 with the launch of its “ESG Club” and the “Vega Durable” fund, one of the first ESG/SRI fund of funds.
The asset management company is therefore announcing its ambition to invest in companies that intentionally generate a measurable positive social and environmental impact while minimizing the negative impacts of their activities.
In this context, VEGA Investment Managers will rely on impak Finance’s expertise in extra-financial analysis and on its proprietary impact scoring and reporting tool, impak IS2, that evaluates and tracks companies’ global impact through simplified and comparable impact indicators.
Vega Investment Managers thereby adds a unique turnkey solution to its toolbox that will allow its portfolio managers to compare the impact of companies with each other, with precision and transparency. By coupling this expertise with its fundamental analysis, the asset manager will select companies that combine and optimise financial performance with social and/or environmental value-add. The relevance of the extra-financial impact statements produced by impak IS2 reside in its holistic approach, that takes into account the entire spectrum of positive and negative impacts generated by the activities of a company, in relation to its turnover.
The impact investing market, estimated to amount to 455 billion euros in 2019, attracts a growing number of investors willing to put their capital at the service of societal change. The partnership between VEGA Investment Managers and impak Finance responds to this change by offering to the market a transparent and innovative analysis in order to incentivise companies’ transformation. It therefore becomes possible to contribute to the creation of social and environmental riches with an investment.
Marc Riez, CEO of VEGA Investment Managers, commented, “We are listening to our investors. This partnership preserves our ‘Growth Value’ investment philosophy that is in the DNA of our company, all the while responding to a growing demand in favour of tangible and transparent impact measurement that goes beyond the simple integration of ESG criteria in our management processes.“
Paul Allard, President and CEO of impak Finance, completed that, “Thanks to our expertise and VEGA IM’s investment philosophy, this partnership constitutes a turning point in the finance sector because it puts the power back into the hands of investors, allowing them to combine profitability and real positive impacts where the needs are the most obvious.“
About VEGA Investment Managers
In 25 years, VEGA Investment Managers has become the centre of expertise for the BPCE Group’s wealth management – France’s 2nd largest banking group. A subsidiary of Natixis Wealth Management, its DNA is firmly linked to wealth management. A true talent magnet, VEGA IM conceives tailored financial solutions thanks to its 3 fundamental activities: Collective Management, Discretionary Investment Management and Fund Selection in open architecture. Thanks to its experience with institutional investors and large private accounts, VEGA IM offers performing and resilient asset allocations to its clients. The company is particularly recognized for its expertise on european markets and its « growth » management style. VEGA IM is a pioneer of open architecture and analyses hundreds of investment funds to diversify its portfolio around all asset classes. Since 2018, the company has developed an expertise around fund selection based on ESG criteria.
Composed of 63 collaborators*, VEGA IM remains a small structure; thanks to their experience of more than 20 years on the financial markets, the 30 analysts-managers* put their convictions at the service of active management. Their proximity to investors is real: they accompany them on average for 19 years. With 8.3 billion euros Assets Under Management, VEGA IM proves the relevance of its responsible and responsive asset management philosophy.
*Numbers as of October 31st, 2019.
To learn more, visit www.vega-im.com
About impak Finance, the independent impact rating agency
The mission of the canadian start-up impak Finance and its French subsidiary is to direct capital to the impact economy. It developed impak IS2, an impact scoring and reporting tool that relies on the Impact Management Project and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This solution allows professional investors to choose investments based on the positive social and / or environmental impacts they generate. impak IS2 also allows investors to rank companies based on their impak Score and generates a global extra-financial balance sheet statement comprised of positive and negative impacts. impak Finance has also developed a family of impak indices based on the impak Score and other elements of the impak database.
To learn more, visit https://www.impak.eco/en/investor/
Media contacts
VEGA Investment Managers
Leslie DAHAN
leslie.dahan@vega-im.com
impak Finance
Stéphanie BERNIER-MONZON
stephanie.bernier-monzon@impakanalytics.com