Kempen Capital Management is an asset manager that believes in stewardship and investment focusing on the long-term for the benefit of all stakeholders. Value creation is at the heart of the services we provide to our clients. We believe that being an engaged shareholder on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and retaining a long-term focus, is critical to helping our clients to preserve and create sustainable wealth that has positive real world impact and economic returns.

Kempen wide approach to responsible investment

We are committed to create sustainable alpha. The four pillars of our ESG-policy are:

• ESG integration: Ensuring sustainability risks and opportunities are adequately considered in our investment analysis and processes.

• Exclusion & avoidance: Not investing in companies involved in controversial activities or conduct.

• Active ownership: Being responsible stewards of our clients’ capital and using our influence through engagement and voting to improve corporate behaviour on specific ESG issues and achieve positive change

• Positive impact: Investing with an objective to achieve positive real world outcomes and impact, such as contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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To put our mission and vision into practice we engage with our investee companies on a wide array of strategic, financial, and ESG topics. As an active owner we use our influence to improve our investee companies’ ESG performance.  This helps us address some of the most pressing and important sustainability issues facing business and the world. Our focus themes for engagement are: human rights, labour rights, climate change and governance.

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Through collaboration with other investors and industry think tanks we contribute to the development of principles and standards of corporate responsibility both at sector levels, as well as investee company level.

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Our full voting records are available here.

OUR FUND APPROACH TO RESPONSIBLE INVESTMENT

Kempen’s ESG policy is fully implemented in our fund’s investment process across the three relevant pillars of: Exclusion, Integration and Active ownership.

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1. Exclusion

The fund follows the clear and transparent exclusion framework we have developed. According to the framework the fund currently excludes companies involved in the production of controversial weapons and tobacco. Furthermore, the strategy avoids investments in companies that structurally violate ESG criteria, with no willingness to improve. In total 177 companies are excluded from the fund’s global equity universe.

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2. ESG integration

ESG criteria are an integral part of the investment process. The aim is to incorporate material ESG issues in our fundamental analysis. This means that portfolio managers perform an in-depth analysis of ESG data and material ESG risks and reflect them in the assumptions used in the valuation assessment. For example, as demonstrated in the chart on the right side, the ESG impact forms part of our Earnings Power Value (EPV) valuation model.

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3. Active ownership

The aim of the engagements our fund participates in is to use our influence as a shareholder to encourage the companies we invest in to improve policies and practices in specific ESG issues. A successful engagement reduces the ESG risk and as a result unlocks value in the interest of our clients. In 2018 we held over 200 company engagements and voted at 104 shareholder meetings.

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In order to lay out our guiding investment principles, we send a “welcome letter” to most of the companies we invest in. In this letter, we explain to the company why we made the decision to invest and what our long-term expectations are, including those in the areas of social and environmental responsibilities and corporate governance.

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Our fund also believes in the strength of collaborative engagement. Through cooperation with other investors and fund managers, we can increase the leverage of our engagement activities. In 2018, for example, we participated in the CIO Exchange Collaboration on Energy transition.

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Our engagement focus is on: climate change and energy efficiency, and corporate governance. For example recent activities include:Â

• Shell: We engaged with senior management to set carbon targets with success as Shell announced that it will link its scope 1,2 and 3 carbon targets to its remuneration. You can find the engagement factsheet here.

• Severstal: We are monitoring Severstal’s health & safety efforts and encouraging the company to establish health & safety best practices that set an example to other Russian steel producers. As a result of the engagement, the company is working on a revised policy and process on labour. You can find the engagement factsheet here.

• China Mobile: We have teamed up with another investor to engage with China Mobile. Our ultimate goal is to improve the company’s capital allocation as the company has a very inefficient balance sheet. To achieve this goal, it is in our view crucial that the Board becomes more independent.

Risks

^{Although Kempen Capital Management N.V.’s information providers, including without limitation, MSCI ESG Research LLC and its affiliates (the “ESG Parties”), obtain information from sources they consider reliable, none of the ESG Parties warrants or guarantees the originality, accuracy and/or completeness of any data herein. None of the ESG Parties makes any express or implied warranties of any kind, and the ESG Parties hereby expressly disclaim all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to any data herein. None of the ESG Parties shall have any liability for any errors or omissions in connection with any data herein. Further, without limiting any of the foregoing, in no event shall any of the ESG Parties have any liability for any direct, indirect, special, punitive, consequential or any other damages (including lost profits) even if notified of the possibility of such damages.}