Inbrief

Two huge pension funds have joined the Enhanced Analytics Initiative, an international collaboration in which asset owners and managers encourage brokers to produce research that considers how ‘extra-financial’ issues may affect companies’ financial performance in the longer term. By joining the initiative, the BT Pension Scheme, which is the UK’s largest with assets of £33billion ($58bn), and the Dutch civil service pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP – one of the world’s largest asset owners with €187bn ($225bn, £125bn) invested – commit themselves to allocate at least five per cent of their annual broker commissions to firms that best analyse socially responsible investment issues.