Ethos Foundation has the pleasure to announce its 150th member. The engagement program “Ethos Engagement Pool” for its part welcomes its 100th member. These two milestones are signs of the great confidence and growing interest that Swiss pension funds have for socially responsible investment and the systematic voting of shares in investee companies.
The Ethos Foundation was created in 1997 by two Geneva pension funds convinced that responsible investment of retirement savings can contribute to a stable and prosperous socio-economic environment. Today Ethos Foundation is very pleased to welcome its 150th member, the pension fund of Holcim. In all, the members of Ethos represent 1 million beneficiaries with CHF 190 billion in assets under management, which is approximately 25% of the Swiss second pillar.
In order to make progress on socially responsible investment, Ethos Foundation created the company Ethos Services SA of which it remains the majority shareholder together with several Swiss pension funds. Ethos Services offers:
- A number of investment funds with a socially responsible investment (SRI) approach.
- A proxy voting service with voting recommendations.
- An engagement program with Swiss listed companies (Ethos Engagement Pool).
- Environmental, social and governance analyses of companies.
The 100th member to join the engagement program “Ethos Engagement Pool”
For Ethos, active shareownership is mainly based on a discrete dialog with the management of companies. For this, in 2004, Ethos launched its dialog program with Swiss listed companies, the Ethos Engagement Pool, which herewith welcomes the Building Insurance of the Canton of Lucerne as its 99th and the Pension Fund of St Ursen in Solothurn as its 100th member.
The dialog aims to re-enforce the corporate governance as well as the environmental and social responsibility of listed companies. Among the topics discussed, there is for example the composition and functioning of the board of directors, the implementation of the code of conduct as well as the strategy with regards to climate change.
The lists of members of Ethos Foundation and of the dialog program as well as the main engagement results of the Ethos Engagement Pool can be found online at http://www.ethosfund.ch.
