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Specialist in Asia Pacific, Japan, China, India and South East Asia and Global Emerging Market equities.

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Our philosophy is very simple. We are constantly searching for high quality businesses and when we acquire them, we will work relentlessly with them to create long-term sustainable value through innovation, ESG-led and proactive asset management.

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Stewart Investors manage investment portfolios on behalf of our clients over the long term and have held shares in some companies for over 20 years. They launched their first investment strategy in 1988.

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Our approach

Our approach

Our strategy is to lead change

As long-term investors, we know that the investment decisions we make today impact communities in the future.

First Sentier Investors places responsible investment at the heart of what we do. We are entrusted with our clients’ money, and we invest it with today and tomorrow in mind. Every investment team has the autonomy to develop their own approach to ESG issues, but the common thread is a focus on considering how investment decisions will impact clients, communities and the environment.

Our strategic approach to responsible investment continues to focus on enhancing the quality and relevance of our investment capabilities, embedding a culture of stewardship across the organisation and engaging all of our employees in our responsible investment work.

Benchmarking our progress

Our approach to responsible investment and stewardship is designed to deliver the best possible long-term outcomes for our clients.

As industry practice continues to evolve, we continue to look for standards and industry codes to benchmark ourselves against. These help us both to identify areas where we can make improvements and to guide the development of our reporting and disclosure mechanisms, in turn enabling us to increase transparency.

Two important independent standards against which we benchmark ourselves are the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Assessment ratings and the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA) Benchmark Report.

We have been a Signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment since 2007. Our PRI Assessment results provide a useful independent benchmark of our progress against industry peers. In 2023, PRI introduced a number of new questions and modules, and merged/shifted a number of modules. This means our scores changed for a number of modules. In 2023, we achieved 5 stars on Fixed Income Corporate, Fixed Income Securitised, Fixed Income Private Debt, Direct Infrastructure, and Confidence Building Measures. For additional information, you can read our PRI Assessment Report or access the PRI Transparency Report on the UN PRI’s website.

There were changes in the assessment methodology from 2020 to 2021, with 2021 being a pilot of a new methodology1. Module scores have moved from alphabetical grading (A to E+) to a new numerical grading system ranging from 1 to 5 stars (with 5 stars being the highest grade) in 2021 to reflect that scores for the 2021 reporting cycle cannot be compared to previous years.

 

1 Absolute grading has been adopted in order to achieve a more balanced distribution of scores than under the previous methodology.

PRI Assessment Report summaries

2023 scores

2021 scores (pilot published in 2022)

2014-2020 scores

 

In 2020 we scored an ‘A+’ rating in 7 of the 8 categories against which we are assessed and ‘A’ in the 8th1

1 Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, From Values to Riches 2020

Responsible Investment Leader 2023

We are proud to be recognised as a Responsible Investment Leader, the highest possible standard for investors, by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA). This recognises our commitment to responsible investing and attributes as an investment manager.

Discover our reports

Read our latest annual
Responsible Investment Report

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Read our latest annual
Stewardship Report

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