“We can implement this across segregated accounts or separately managed accounts, and we do intend to apply our country policy across other managers and asset classes,” Patel said in an interview. “Government debt — and emerging-market government debt — is the largest concentration of exposure, and therefore our first area of focus.”
State-backed assets from Singapore have ended up on an ESG blacklist at Van Lanschot Kempen NV, after Asia’s wealthiest country per capita failed an updated ESG test used by the wealth manager to screen for environmental risks.
Kempen, which oversees about US$130 billion ($174.68 billion) of client assets from its base in the Netherlands, started applying its test to sovereign bonds and state-backed entities last year. The results mostly feed through to portfolio allocations for pension clients, but can also affect other customer groups, said Nikesh Patel, senior executive at the firm.
