Press Release: impak & VEGA IM launch the Vega Responsible Transformation Fund

FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE

 

Launch of the Vega Responsible Transformation Fund

Thanks to impak Finance’s expertise, a new fund integrating impact analysis to its management is launched to invest in companies that intentionally generate a positive social and environmental impact while minimizing the negative impacts of their activities.

 

Montreal, Canada, October 22nd, 2020: Since the development of the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN in 2015, investing in companies that contribute positively to social and environmental causes has become necessary, as long as this contribution is relevant and can be measured reliably.

Thanks to its strategic partnership established in 2019 with the independent impact rating agency, impak Finance, VEGA Investment Managers offers a tangible response to this global challenge by integrating impact analysis to the fund’s management. This innovative approach, taking into account the generation of positive impacts as well as mitigation of negative impacts, has led to the creation of the VEGA Responsible Transformation Fund, on August 31st.

The new mutual investment fund allies the historical expertise of VEGA Investment Managers in terms of selecting “growth stocks” to the 360° impact analyses of companies called “impact statements” produced by impak Finance, and the impak Scores™ ratings given to each of them accordingly.

Thanks to the transparency of the impact statements and impak Scores™, built on the Impact Management Project norms – the international reference in terms of impact assessment – VEGA IM can easily compare companies with one another based on their true impact, even if they evolve in different industries or are of different sizes.

Therefore, Vega Responsible Transformation’s management process combines a financial and extra-financial analysis in order to select, within each sector, the stocks presenting the best performance potential in the medium term and the best impak Score™.

In its approach, the manager applies the following method: Establish the portfolio’s impak Score™ (S1) by calculating a weighted average of the impact rating of each stock selected within the portfolio.
For the calculation of the reference index’s impak Score™, they compute a weighted average of the impact ratings of the CAC 40’s constituents (net dividends reinvested), after having subscribed 20% (by weight) of the values having received the lowest impact rating.
Finally, the manager aims to achieve a portfolio impak Score™ (S1) superior to the weighted impak Score™ of the reference index (S2).

The fund’s objective is to realize a performance (net of fees and annualized) superior to that of the reference index CAC 40 (net dividends reinvested), over a recommended investment horizon longer than 5 years.

The investment is not without risks. The main risks are: risk of loss of capital; risk linked to investing in the stock market; risk linked to discretionary management.

 

VEGA Responsible Transformation is not an SRI labeled fund, but the SRI approach is taken into account in the stock selection process for at least 90% of the portfolio’s assets.

 

Paul Allard, President and CEO of impak Finance, commented: “We believe that this fund is the first giant step toward a truly responsible and profitable finance based on transparency. Finally, investors and the public have the tools to become catalysts for long-needed social and environmental change. Today we make the adage concrete: planet, people, and thus profit.

 

Marc Riez, CEO of Vega Investment managers, added: “Given the urgency to act, taking into account negative impacts mitigation through ESG criteria appears to be not sufficient; thanks to the analysis methodology developed by impak Finance, we are now able to invest in companies that also generate positive impacts, contributing to reach the SDG’s by 2030.

 

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 in European markets and its « growth » management style. VEGA IM is a pioneer of open architecture and analyzes 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 in 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 of 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

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 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 composed 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 www.impakanalytics.com

 

About Natixis Wealth Management

Natixis Wealth Management is the specialized wealth management arm of Natixis, which is part of BPCE Group’s wealth management – France’s 2nd largest banking group. Present in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium, it designs and implements tailor-made financial solutions to optimize the private and professional wealth of its clientele of entrepreneurs and senior executives, or owners of wealth built up over several generations. Natixis Wealth Management has close to 500 collaborators and manages more than 30 billion euros (as of December 31st, 2019).

To learn more, visit www.wealthmanagement.natixis.com

 

###


impak Analytics