Haas SRI Fund (HSRIF)

 

 

New Socially Responsible Investment Fund Chooses Innovest Strategic Value Advisors to Provide Research

 

May 2008

 

Berkeley, CA - The new student-managed socially responsible investment fund at UC Berkeley’s Walter A. Haas School of Business is proud to announce its first research provider, the internationally recognized investment research and advisory firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors.  The twelve Berkeley MBA and MFE student principals approached Innovest as a potential research provider because of their innovative methodology, which analyzes environmental, social, and strategic governance (ESG) issues in relation to their impact on profitability, competitiveness, and price performance drivers.  Innovest’s focus on the relevant ESG risks and its relative rankings of these factors within an industry is unique among SRI research providers.

 

Student Principal and MBA 2008 Margot Kane said,  “Innovest’s industry snapshots and company rankings help us understand the material social, environmental, and governance issues that are most likely to affect company performance in a wide range of industries. Since we are still learning about the industries where we’re investing, Innovest’s research really helps us focus on the most important data.”

 

Innovest generously agreed to provide its extensive research at no cost to the fund for the first year of its operation. Pierre Trevet, Managing Director of Innovest’s San Francisco office, said "We are delighted Haas Berkeley selected Innovest to provide ESG research. The Haas SRI Fund is unique in its genre, in that it places students in the driver's seat of fiduciaries. Their goal of managing a $1.2 mandate confronts them with the dual responsibility to deliver both excess returns and an environmental/social dividend. With their selection of Innovest, it is our hope they will find they can do just that."

 

The educational goal of the $1.2 million socially responsible fund is to provide students with practical experience in investing with a social mission. To this end, the student principals managing the fund have the opportunity to explore innovative strategies to seek both financial and social returns and discover the relevant social and financial drivers of company sustainability.

 

About Innovest

 

Founded in 1995, Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an internationally recognized investment research and advisory firm specializing in analyzing companies’ performance on environmental, social, and strategic governance issues, with a particular focus on their impact on competitiveness, profitability, and share price performance.  Innovest currently has offices in New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Paris, Sydney, and Tokyo.

 

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