AIB Investment ManagersPeter Ryan is head of socially responsible investment (SRI) at AIB Investment Managers (AIBIM) and co-ordinates the Global Equity SRI fund.
What is your investment approach?
Our Global Equity SRI fund invests in global equities and applies SRI criteria as part of the individual stock selection process.
The fund’s geographic and individual stock positioning reflects our views of the evolving economic, markets and investment cycle outlook. We are currently overweight US and, to a lesser extent, pan-European equities, but underweight the Asia region (excluding Japan).
Stocks selected are screened so as to avoid investment in common areas of concern to SRI investors such as tobacco, gambling, arms manufacture and pornography.
Over recent years, there has also been a growing emphasis on identifying positive SRI change within different companies. Therefore, from the remaining range of sectors and potential investee companies, we seek to screen for companies that score well on environmental and corporate governance issues.
How has your fund performed?Over the 12 months to the end of April, the fund participated in the strong global equity market recovery, achieving a return of 33.8 per cent. Over five years, the annualised return was 2.3 per cent, reflecting poor market performance over that time.
However the fund’s performance was ranked in the second quartile of returns produced by over 580 funds in the Lipper* global equity category.
What is your outlook?Our belief is that global economic recovery is still under way. Lead indicators remain positive and earnings results continue to surprise on the upside. Valuations for developed market equities are still reasonable and, while markets have weakened in recent times, the medium-term outlook for equities is still positive.
*(Lipper is an agency that rates the performance of international fund managers.)
In conversation with Caroline Madden
