Vanguard steps up sustainable investing expertise.pdf (PDF - 62KB)

Melbourne, 1 July, 2008 - Vanguard Investments Australia (Vanguard) has encouraged institutional investors to take a long-term, holistic view when accessing sustainability based investments.

Vanguard offers two sustainability funds for institutional investors: The Vanguard Sustainability Leaders Australian Shares Fund and The Vanguard Sustainability Leaders International Shares Fund.

Each fund is managed by Vanguard in association with the global asset management company Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). The funds were established in 2001 and will now sit under the Vanguard brand.

Companies selected for inclusion within the Vanguard funds are independently assessed by Swiss-based SAM, which conducts annual sustainability assessments on companies globally. SAM scores companies in terms of their corporate sustainability - ranking stocks within industry sectors.

SAM assesses the sustainability of companies according to environmental, social and economic factors relevant to the individual company's industry sector.

The Vanguard Sustainability Leaders Australian Shares Fund portfolio holds the stocks included in the Australian SAM Sustainability Index (AuSSI). SAM selects approximately one third of 200 of Australia's largest listed companies for inclusion in the AuSSI.

The Vanguard Sustainability Leaders International Shares Fund is constructed using the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index ex-Australia, which identifies the top 250 global sustainability performers from a pool of large and mid-cap companies worldwide. Vanguard assigns weightings to this select group to reflect risk and return characteristics of the MSCI World ex-Australia Index.

Eric Smith, Vanguard's Chief Investment Officer, said "These funds provide adequate diversification and, as such, from a trustee's point of view, they could be considered for a substantial part or perhaps even the whole of the trustee's investment portfolio."
The Sustainability Leaders Funds each provide:

- Exposure to internationally leading companies in terms of sustainable business practices;
- Low risk relative to broad market indexes;
- Sustainability research provided by SAM, combined with Vanguard's renowned low cost portfolio management.

"In an age of superannuation fund choice, there's increasing demand for sustainable investing options and these funds provide trustees with a fundamentally strong solution to satisfy these demands," Mr Smith said.

"Vanguard has long recognised the importance of this market and we believe there will be greater awareness of the funds under the Vanguard name which will in turn be of premium benefit to investors."