Capital Group Signs on to UN Global Compact
Capital Group, one of the world’s largest investment management firms, announced today that it has joined the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), pledging to align its operations with the initiative’s sustainability principles, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).
The UNGC is a consortium of companies and organizations across the globe committed to aligning their strategies and operations with a series of ten principles on human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption, and to take strategic action to advance broader societal goals such as the 17 UN SDGs.
Jessica Ground, Capital Group’s Global Head of ESG, said:
“The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are a critical framework for asset managers and the companies we invest in to quantify their impact. By leveraging the SDGs, we will add further focus to our ESG process, and better understand the impact we are achieving as an asset manager and employer.”
Capital Group stated that it has integrated ESG across all of its investment strategies, and that the firm’s firm’s investment frameworks and business operations have been mapped to five prioritized SDG themes, including Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Development, Reduced Inequalities, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Climate Action.
According to Capital Group Vice Chairman Robert W. Lovelace, the firm is committed to providing more transparency on its ESG integration process. Lovelace said:
“Capital Group has always believed that knowing how a company interacts with and impacts its community, customers, suppliers and employees is important to understanding its potential as an investment. Our experience and research indicate that a company taking a thoughtful and robust approach to Environmental, Social and Governance dimensions is a positive indicator of sustainability and strategic thinking, and that those factors will eventually be positively reflected in its valuation.”