Coronavirus and market updates

Heather Smith discusses progress on board diversity and pay equity engagements, as well as companies’ new willingness to disclose employee demographic data — what’s driving that and why she hopes it will become a long-term trend.

Joe Keefe reflects on 2020 and the hopeful signals for the year ahead.

In this quarter’s commentary, we share perspectives on systemic risks, including pandemic risk, climate risk, biodiversity loss, and racial and gender discrimination and inequality. All these issues have spread quickly around the globe, and all of them have and will continue to affect the economy and financial markets.

The contours of the post-COVID landscape are yet to fully come into focus. Unlike in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis however, there are clear signs that concerns about environmental issues have been elevated by what we have recently experienced.

In this quarter’s commentary, we share perspectives on the rapid rebound in equities amid continued COVID-19 uncertainty, resiliency in sustainable investing and the sharper focus placed on sustainability as a result of the pandemic and uprising against racism.

We are monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely. Here’s what we’re doing to ensure business continuity during this very unusual time.

In this quarter’s commentary, we cover the unprecedented market events of the first quarter and the continued economic uncertainty going forward due to the COVID-19 crisis. We also share perspective about how our investment discipline may help navigate elevated market volatility.

The five key scores that matter when investing in times such as these

We are co-operating with other investors to provide companies with a united message on our expectations of how they should respond to the Coronavirus. We have co-signed the Investor Statement on Coronavirus Response and would encourage other investors to do the same.