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.Â�

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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

At Kempen, we manage several funds and mandates invested in listed Real Estate companies including the Global Property Fund^[1] and the European Property Fund.

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Kempen’s ESG policy is implemented in our fund’s investment process by the following pillars: ESG Integration and Active ownership.

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Exclusion & Avoidance

In line with the general Kempen policy, the Global Property Fund and the European Property Fund excludes all companies on the KCM Exclusion- or Avoidance list.

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Companies that ‘Fail’ or are on ‘Watchlist’ marked against the criteria of the United Nations Global Compact are excluded.

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ESG integration

We believe financial and sustainability returns are indivisible and that those companies that can find the right balance between all stakeholders will drive value. Our ESG analysis for listed real estate companies includes:

• Implementing our ESG quality score into the company score of each Real Estate company we model;

• Monitoring the global investment universe on Real Estate companies that exhibit negative excesses, such as environmental pollution measured by CO2 emission levels to initiate engagement;

• Benchmarking Real Estate companies against each other and visualising these results for our investment process and our clients in order to identify leaders and laggards;

• Entering into dialogue with companies we invest in, to improve their ESG policies and practices;

• Translating information of Real Estate company portfolios with lower sustainability scores into higher maintenance capex assumptions in our Kempen valuation models;

• Offering product customisation to our clients who (for example) want to invest in lower CO2 emission Real Estate portfolios only.

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In our investment framework there are three key aspects we look at in determining the warranted valuation: management value add, balance sheet and ESG. We are willing to pay up for those companies that excel in ESG. This believe is underpinned by academic literature.

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The figure 'How ESG is integrated in our investment process' shows how ESG is incorporated into the investment process. Note that we do not only invest in the ESG leaders but also in the laggards as the potential value to be unlocked by providing capital to those who need it the most is massive.

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Active ownership

As an active investor, the Real Estate funds also actively engage with companies on their strategic, financial and social responsibilities.

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Our engagements focus on those companies where we believe substantial value can be unlocked. Engagement can take place on a wide array of topics including:

• Reducing CO2 intensity levels;

• Reducing energy and water consumption;

• Improving waste recycling;

• Improving working conditions and human rights;

• Improving governance structures;

• Improving shareholder alignment;

• Shifting remuneration policies from being linked to short term goals to long term targets

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You can find the engagement factsheet of Kojamo Oyj here.

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Our full ESG policy can be downloaded here.

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^{[1]Kempen (Lux) Global Property Fund (the “Sub-Fund”) is a sub-fund of Kempen International Funds SICAV (the “Fund”), domiciled in Luxembourg.}

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^{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.}