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Global Emerging Markets Sustainability
The Global Emerging Markets Sustainability strategy invests in between 30-75 high-quality companies that are contributing to a more sustainable future.
Our Global Emerging Markets Sustainability strategy was launched in 2009 and invests in between 30 to 75 high-quality companies that are contributing to a more sustainable future. The strategy’s bottom-up approach allows us to find only the very best businesses from an investable universe of some 65,000 companies. We are looking for companies well positioned to contribute to long-term sustainable development; businesses with high quality management teams, franchises, and financials.
Strategy highlights: a focus on quality and sustainability
- Companies must contribute to sustainable development. Portfolio Explorer >
- We invest in high-quality companies with exceptional cultures, strong franchises and resilient financials. How we pick companies >
- We avoid companies linked to harmful activities and engage and vote for positive change. Our position on harmful products >
- Our approach is long-term, bottom-up, high conviction and benchmark agnostic
- We focus on capital preservation as well as capital growth – we define risk as the permanent loss of client capital
Latest insights
Quarterly updates
Strategy update: Q3 2024
Global Emerging Markets Sustainability strategy update: 1 July - 30 September 2024
Most of the quarter’s activity happened in September, as is often the case. It is in such moments, like the biggest market moves since 2009 in China and Hong Kong and rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, that we remain grateful for our long-term philosophy. It gives us the ability to step back in moments of such volatility and reminds us to focus on the more important, bottom-up drivers for the companies we own on your behalf.
Over the course of the quarter, we have sold out of one of our Indian banks. RBL Bank (India: Financials), which we purchased in December 2023. The new management team seemed determined to move the bank towards less risky (more secured) lending which at 1x price-to-book (P/B)1 appeared attractively priced. Unfortunately, the quarter after we purchased the company, it became clear that unsecured bank loans had been growing at over 30% and the path to a more balanced loan portfolio would be a lot longer than we had expected. Added to that, we are seeing a few banks that are struggling to grow their deposit base which impacts how they can fund their loan growth. For many years, most depositors avoided the public sector banks fearing either insolvency or potential loss of deposits. They have been cleaned up and professionalised which is great for the Indian saver and borrower but tougher for the private sector banks who benefitted from weak competition in the public sector. With prospects for RBL looking riskier and with better ideas elsewhere, we decided to exit.
We exited Yifeng Pharmacy Chain (China: Consumer Staples) which was another name where we were becoming worried about increased regulatory oversight having a negative impact on profit margins. We are confident that they will continue to roll up the pharmacy sector in China – in much the same way that RaiaDrogasil (Brazil: Consumer Staples) is doing in Brazil – but we worry that Beijing could well impose price cuts on those drugs purchased through medical insurance plans.