Sustainable Investing at Rockefeller

"At Rockefeller, Sustainable Investing is a core part of our history. In the 1970s, the family launched its first mission-related fund. In early 1991, we launched a Global ESG Equity strategy. Drawing on over 40 years of intellectual capital, we offer our clients one of the most comprehensive sustainable investing platforms seeking to create value and catalyze change."

Gregory J. Fleming, President & Chief Executive Officer

The Rockefeller heritage in sustainable and impact investing dates back to the 1970s, when the family office began public and private investment programs that incorporated environmental and social values into the investment process. Rockefeller family members have long held the view that investment decisions have imperative moral, social and financial dimensions.

Decades of Thought Leadership

1977

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Four Sustainable Investing Pillars

Rockefeller Asset Management

Rockefeller Global Family Office

Socially Responsible Investing

Excluding objectionable business activities in order to align values with investment objectives. Pioneered by religious organizations centuries ago.

Mission-Driven Impact

Investing approach that seeks to generate a positive environmental or social impact. Often used alongside grant-making portfolios to help advance a foundation’s mission.

Thematic

Investment strategies designed to generate excess returns while catalyzing change alongside specific themes such as climate change, ocean health, diversity and affordable housing.

ESG Integration

Seeking to enhance returns or reduce risk by incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. Increasingly demarcated between ESG Leaders and ESG Improvers, which are firms showing the greatest improvement in their ESG footprint.

Drawing on the intellectual capital built over the past 40 years, Rockefeller Asset Management offers our clients investment solutions integrating ESG research and a constructive engagement approach.

ESG Foundation

Research

Rockefeller’s Proprietary Materiality Map identifies ESG issues that are material to the risk and return profile of companies across 77 Sustainable Industry Classification System (SICS®) industries. It serves as the foundation for our research and engagement process. In the years ahead, we believe that investors will increasingly differentiate between ESG Improvers and ESG Leaders, and that the former may offer greater potential for generating alpha over the long run.

Engagement

Shareholder engagement is a core part of our investment process before purchasing a stock and throughout the holding period. Our engagement approach strengthens our investment process by identifying material ESG issues and constructively engaging with companies to create long-term shareholder value and catalyze positive ESG improvement. Our shareholder engagement “escalation process” helps increase the probability of an outcome. The escalation process follows four stages: (1) Constructive dialogue, (2) Official letters, (3) Collaborative action, and (4) Shareholder resolutions.

Thought Leadership

We embark on thought leadership initiatives to inform our research and engagement process. As a testament to our leadership, Rockefeller Asset Management was awarded PRI’s ESG Research Report of the Year award for our work with the UN assessing the impact of climate change on investment portfolios. We publish an annual ESG Report, regular updates on our company level engagement work, white papers on ESG themes, and generate customized company engagement and impact reports for clients.

Strategy Showcase

Active Equity Capabilities

Global ESG
Global ESG Fossil Fuel Free
Non-U.S. ESG
Non-U.S. ESG Fossil Fuel Free
U.S. All-Cap ESG
U.S. Small Cap ESG

Investment Philosophy: We believe that market inefficiencies are caused by an overemphasis on short-term results, a lack of global perspective, and historical behavioral biases.

Investment Approach: In seeking to capitalize on these factors, we employ a bottom-up, fundamental investment approach with a long-term horizon, while integrating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) research to provide additional insight into a company’s long-term competitive edge and help identify risks and opportunities that equity analysis alone might not fully consider. Our collaborative investment team seeks to identify active, high conviction portfolios of compelling investment opportunities, and we take a constructive engagement approach to working with companies to maximize returns and catalyze positive change.

Thematic Equity Capabilities

Climate Solutions

Our Climate Solutions Strategy seeks long-term capital growth by investing in companies focused on climate change mitigation or adaptation solutions across the market capitalization spectrum. We believe that companies positioned alongside environmental sectors have the potential to significantly outperform the broader equity market over the long-term. As such, our approach targets a subset of global companies that have greater than 50% revenue exposure, or 20% and rapidly growing share, to climate solutions across the globe.

Active Fixed Income Capabilities

Short Term Taxable ESG
Core Taxable ESG
Intermediate Tax Exempt ESG

Our Fixed Income strategies employ an investment process based on analysis of macroeconomic conditions complemented by fundamental credit research set within a sophisticated risk management and portfolio construction framework. Strategy dependent, our ESG portfolios hold taxable or tax-exempt securities across varying maturities that promote environmental, social and governance goals. Our experienced team of investment professionals focuses on a disciplined process seeking to provide capital preservation.

Catalyze Positive Change

Positive Sustainable Investments

We provide our clients the ability to generate positive impact through investments that seek to catalyze positive change, drawing from the Rockefeller family’s proud tradition of pursuing sustainable investments for more than 100 years.

Shareholder Engagement

Our process seeks to identify investment managers that can effectively utilize shareholder engagement to promote ESG best practices and protect and enhance shareholder value.

Thought Leadership

We provide our clients insight to promote and scale sustainable investments and markets.

Provide Investment and Wealth Advice

Educate

We provide education and resources to help keep our clients at the forefront of sustainable investing.

Advise

We advise across our clients' personal and charitable investment portfolios and seek to achieve both financial and sustainable objectives.

Implement

We bring to bear the depth of experience and extensive capabilities of our team to identify a focus list of compelling opportunities that align with our clients' sustainable and financial objectives.

Measure

We seek to measure positive impact alongside financial performance. Examples include shareholder engagement outcomes and alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Executing on a Shared Vision to Create Value and Catalyze Change

GREGORY J. FLEMING

President & Chief Executive Officer

JIMMY C. CHANG, CFA®

Chief Investment Strategist

CASEY C. CLARK, CFA®

Global Head of ESG Investments

LAURA K. ESPOSITO

Head of Institutional & Intermediary Distribution

CANDICE DIAL

Director of ESG, Family Office

JOSEPH A. FERLISI

Chief Information Officer & Chief Information Security Officer

DAVID P. HARRIS, CFA®

Chief Investment Officer & President of Asset Management

LISA MANGANELLO

Chief Marketing Officer

JOHN "CHIP" MONTGOMERY

Head of Business Strategy and Corporate Development

TIMOTHY D. O’HARA

President, The Family Office

CHRISTOPHER J. RANDAZZO

President, Private Wealth Management

JASON RICH

Chief Operating Officer, Private Wealth Management

JACK RYAN

Chief Operating Officer

JEFFREY SHAMES

Senior Strategy Advisor

LAURA D’ANDREA TYSON

Special Advisor

BARRY A. WINTNER, CFA®

Head of Manager Selection

GRACE YOON

Head of Client Development & Strategic Partnerships

Our Ideas

Kohl’s Case Study

Continuous Improvement on Human Rights in the Supply Chain

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Emission Omission

A Shareholder Engagement Guide to Uncovering Climate Risks from Non-Operated Assets in the Oil and Gas Industry

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ESG Improvers: An Alpha Enhancing Factor

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Rockefeller Insights

Around the Markets: It’s Easy Being Green

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Shenzhou Case Study

Constructive Dialogue Strengthens Reporting & Supply Chain Monitoring

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Amazon Case Study

Collaborating Towards Excellence

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Rockefeller Asset Management 2019 ESG Annual Report

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PRI’s ESG Research Report of the Year

Rockefeller Asset Management was awarded the prestigious Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Research Report of the Year award for its report, "Applying Scenario Analysis to Actively Managed Strategies".

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Proxy Voting Policy - Summary

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Rockefeller Global ESG Equity Engagements

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PRI Policy Investment Statement 2019

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Active Ownership Statement 2019

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Rockefeller Impact Annual Report 2018

This third annual Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) report highlights Rockefeller Capital Management’s investing activities—and priorities ahead—in the midst of challenging global markets.

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2018 ESG Mid-Year Report

No government, industry or individual will remain unaffected by the changing climate. Learn more in our Environment, Social and Governance mid-year report 2018.

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2017 S&I Annual Report

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A Sustainable Blue Economy

This report examines the confluence of inter-governmental cooperation and technologies that are creating opportunities for investors to capitalize on the ocean’s economic potential.

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