ESG and Risk-Adjusted Performance

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ESG and Risk-Adjusted Performance ESG and risk-adjusted performance An empirical and comparative analysis on ESG-fund performance relative to their conventional counterparts in Scandinavia Cassandra Myhre Master’s Thesis University of Oslo Department of Economics Supervisor: Jin Cao Date: May, 2021 Preface This thesis marks the end of my Master’s degree in Economics at the University of Oslo. I want to thank my supervisor, Jin Cao, for his excellent support and guidance throughout the process. I would also like to thank finance major, Edmundas Lapenas, for his invaluable insight in financial data analysis. Our many in-depth discussions have made this thesis possible. I hope that my humble contribution in analysing the ESG effects on risk-adjusted returns in the Scandinavian market will be considered as a valuable source and incentive for further research in this field. Cassandra Myhre, May 2020 Abstract There is an accepted principle in the financial industry that the bigger the risk, the higher the potential reward. The introduction of sustainability in the investment equation has however revolutionised the risk-return tradeoff. Not only with regards to creating value but also because it has ruptured the misconception that responsible funds provide lower returns. Companies who have incorporated Environmental, Social and Fair Governance (ESG) factors into their investment portfolios have shown lower volatility compared to their peers in the same industry. Furthermore, numerous studies have shown that ESG also generated higher returns in the long run, meaning that not only does it potentially minimise risk, but it is also a more profitable choice. In this paper I will conduct an empirical and comparative study of the risk-return tradeoff where I will analyse ESG funds and conventional funds based in Scandinavia, with a sample developed specially for this thesis. The prime goal is to see whether ESG has any affect on risk-adjusted returns. By using traditional performance measurement tools, I will evaluate the portfolios and investigate their risk- adjusted performance. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Structure of the thesis 2 2. Background 3 2.1 History 3 2.2 Case 4 2.3 Why the Nordics? 5 2.4 Scandinavian ESG Markets 7 2.4 Approaches 7 2.5 Short-termism 9 3. Literature review 9 3.1 Social Responsibility and Financial Performance 9 3.2 ESG factors and risk-adjusted performance 10 4. Theory 13 4.1 Shareholder Theory 13 4.2 Stakeholder Theory 13 4.3 Modern Portfolio Theory 13 4.4 The efficient frontier and ESG 15 5. Empirical methodology 17 5.1 Treynor ratio 17 5.2 Sharpe ratio 18 5.3 Jensen’s Alpha 18 5.4 The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) 19 6. Data 20 6.1 Research design - sample selection 20 6.2 MSCI Nordic as benchmark 21 6.3 ESG dataset - Morningstar Sustainability Rating 22 6.4 Conventional portfolio dataset 22 6.5 Risk-free rates 22 6.6 Concerns about the dataset 23 7. Results and discussion 23 7.1 Non-ESG portfolio data analysis 23 7.2 ESG portfolio data analysis 25 7.3 Comparing the results 26 7.4 Discussion 27 7.4.1 Response to a market crisis: COVID-19 29 8. Conclusion and further research 30 9. References 32 Appendix 34 1. Introduction In the past decades there has been a growing demand from various investors to see sustainability issues reflected in their investment choices. Environmental, Social and (Fair) Governance (ESG) investment practices are particularly used as it has shown to potentially have better long-term performance (so far)1 compared to conventional investment opportunities in the same industry. Not only has it shown to be in some industries a more profitable choice in the past years, but the ESG practices also lead to less reputational risk as it is less vulnerable to political and other controversial policies. There has been an increasing amount of papers published on the performance of sustainable funds, however much less has been done to evaluate the actual link between ESG-investing and risk- adjusted performance. Furthermore, how can this be compared to the conventional, non-ESG funds in the same industry? Is it possible to demonstrate that ESG-practices lead to less risk while yielding the same or higher reward? This thesis attempts to investigate the link between ESG factors and risk in the Scandinavian fund market by analysing the following empirical questions: 1) Does ESG-investing have an affect on risk-adjusted returns? 2) Do ESG-funds outperform their conventional counterparts in the risk-return tradeoff in the Scandinavian market? It is important to distinguish the difference between ESG and socially responsible investing (SRI), which should not be used interchangeably. SRI originally was developed to help investors build up a sustainable investment portfolio. This entails strategies such as negative screening and exclusions of companies that would not live up to the investor's ethical standards. Other strategies have been developed such as positive screening. The main difference between ESG and SRI lies in the prioritisation of return and values. While with SRI investors actively eliminate funds on a set of specific ethical standards, the main objective of ESG remains financial performance with an overlay of social consciousness. In other words, even an oil and gas company can be considered responsible if they are working to reduce emissions in its operations. Due to this core difference, it is more interesting to establish how much risk do ESG practices entail and if there is any statistically significant differences compared to non-ESG practices. 1 There is an extensive amount of literature published on the financial performance of ESG funds, however, as the topic is quite new, the findings remain somewhat ambiguous. 1 It also seems that the extent of research done so far suffers from the endogeneity problem, meaning that it is uncertain if a fund's choice of whether or not to invest in ESG is an endogenous decision. Therefore, most of the estimates from simple regressions are quite biased. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 gives us a chance to eliminate this issue. As the ESG characteristics were already fixed before the outbreak, by looking for differences in various variables, such as return, it is possible to measure the resilience of the funds to exogenous shocks. This particular approach could give us a better understanding of the ESG/non-ESG financial fragility and the fund resilience related to it. This suggests a third research question: 3) How do ESG funds react to exogenous shocks and what does it say about the link between ESG and risk-adjusted returns? 1.1 Structure of the thesis The thesis is categorised as follows: Chapter 2 discusses the background and history of ESG investing, followed by a brief case discussion about BP’s Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico challenging the reader to think what could have been the alternative outcome if BP Petroleum would have considered ESG in their investing strategies. The Nordic ESG market is also briefly discussed in Chapter 2 explaining why this thesis focuses on the Scandinavian market. Chapter 3 discusses previous literature on ESG and risk-adjusted performance. Chapter 4 goes in depth about the theoretical framework and how these should be adjusted in lieu of ESG investing. Chapter 5 looks at the empirical methodology used to analyse the data set in this thesis, while chapter 6 describes the data and shows the findings after applying the methods described in the previous chapter. Chapter 7 is the discussion part where the results are being empirically and comparatively analysed based on previous publications and theoretical frameworks. An important part of chapter 7 is the discussion about COVID-19 and how this exogenous shock affected the ESG funds and their conventional counterparts, which is a key finding as it gives the reader a better understanding whether ESG investing is an endogenous decision. This is followed by a conclusion in Chapter 8. At the end of this paper there is a reference list and an appendix with more detailed data analysis. 2 2. Background The concept of sustainable development was for the first time officially defined in the Brundtland Report2 in 1987. The definition reads as follows: « sustainable development meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs». Companies, governments and other entities which actively lead a sustainability profile are becoming more and more recognised, hence rapidly changing the financial market. 2.1 History ESG investing is a relatively new topic, which quite recently has gained popularity among investors. As our world is becoming more globalised and inevitably smaller, investing into risky markets is simply not viable anymore. Policy makers, financial institutions, various investors and governments all share a common interest of decreasing risk and ensuring some stability. The financial crisis of 2008, a result of numerous irresponsible decisions, inefficiencies and lack of transparency in the financial sector, is a good reminder of how risky and uncertain our world actually is. Therefore, the incorporation of ESG factors has become an inevitable part of the investment processes as it has proven to have strong risk and return performance, especially throughout turbulent periods. January 2004 marks the beginning of ESG investing as Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, invited over 50 CEOs of large financial institution to be a part of a joint initiative, where they would try to find ways of how ESG can be incorporated into capital markets. An important milestone in this effort was marked when a report «Who Cares Wins» by Ivo Knoepfel was published followed by a conference hosted in Zurich on the 25th of August in 2005, where senior executives from the financial spectrum participated.
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