Landsea ESGDI released to build sustainable green finance industry chain
Time：2017-09-06
On September 6, at the "New Value, New Responsibility" Landsea China ESG Development Index (ESGDI) Release Forum hosted by Caixin Media, SynTao Green Finance and Business Big Data (BBD), ESGDI was released. Among attendees were Wang Jianzhou, Chairman of the China Association for Public Companies; Chen Kai, Head of China Business, MSCI and Tian Ming, Chairman of Landsea Group (Landsea). They discussed the current situation and trend of ESG development in China and looked into its future.
ESG, formed by "Environmental", "Social" and "Governance", advocates full consideration to the influence of the three factors during investment decision making, and aims to enhance the sustainability of listed companies. The investment principle can well measure enterprises sustainability performance. In recent years, renowned domestic and foreign financial institutions like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, MSCI and ICBC have conducted ESG-based risk analyses or R&D.
Goldman Sachs proposed the concept of ESG early in 2006; at the G20 Hangzhou Summit in 2016, the proposal of green finance was introduced for the first time, a green finance research group was established and related content was written into the communique; in 2017, the central government released the plan to establish green finance reform and innovation pilot zones in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guizhou and Xinjiang, marking that the concept of ESG responsible investment has had a place in the increasingly prosperous green finance field. Meanwhile, the focus of the capital market has gradually shifted to responsible investment, and ESG investment originating from the capital markets of developed countries has become imperative. However, the ESG measurement and observation of industries, regions and the macro environment, as well as effective data support remain deficient at present.
In this context, ESGDI has come out as the worlds first macro ESG index based on big data. A leading ESG platform will be built to develop region-based ESG sub-indexes, rate and rank A-share companies based on the index, and better serve government policy making and market investment decision making, in a bid to promote the transformational development of enterprises, the society and the economy.
Promoting environmental, social and corporate sustainability
"Green is the DNA of Landsea. Over the past 15 years since its founding, Landsea has upheld the strategy of green real estate development, made housing and environment coexist, and endeavored to promote environmental, social and corporate sustainability through actions including product innovation and social responsibility performance, which exactly tallies with the core concept of ESG," said Tian in his opening address.
Tian Ming, Chairman of Landsea Group
Since mapping out the strategy of green differentiation in 2005, Landsea has taken green health as its primary target, actively implemented the ESG concept, improved major environmental problems through "passive buildings" and "renewable energy technologies", created healthy growth environment for children through the Green Bud Action, achieved win-win through cooperative purchasing, and launched the Green Supply Action to promote the sustainable development of the industry. All these measures show Landseas determination to deepen its sustainable operations.
Sponsoring ESGDI represents that Landsea has extended its core concept of green development to the society and the nation, taken an active part in economic, environmental and social improvement, and shouldered the mission of social and environmental development and changes.
ESGDIs macro value hailed
At the forum, Wang Jianzhou, Chairman of the China Association for Public Companies delivered a keynote speech titled "Sustainability Guides Listed Companies Forward". He noted that sustainable development is a systematic, long-term and tough project calling for the concerted efforts of all sides. Sustainable development is both an opportunity and a challenge for listed companies. He expected institutional investors to perform the concept of ESG responsible investment, abandon the behavior of sacrificing the long-term sound development of listed companies for immediate interests, accomplish benign interaction with listed companies based on investment demand, and make sustainable development spontaneous and conscious.
Chen Kai, Head of China Business, MSCI
Chen Kai, Head of China Business, MSCI delivered a keynote speech titled "ESG-Positive Value Chain under Construction". He revealed that current academic researches indicate that the ESG has a significant financial impact, and enterprises with poor ESG performance will face higher capital cost and volatility. The positive value chain of ESG will effectively promote the change of investment value orientation, thus changing the valuation criterion, and prompting listed companies to invest in and improve ESG to gain recognition from institutions and investors and enhance their market value, he added.
(Guo Peiyuan, Chairman of SynTao Green Finance)
In his speech, Guo noted that the G20 Green Finance Study Group co-chaired by the central banks of China and the UK this year is proposed to provide basic support data for green finance through Publicly Available Environmental Data (PAED) with public environmental, social and governance data as data sources, which tallies with the international frontier academic concept of green finance, and proves that public data will play a greater role of basic support in the fields of green finance and responsible investment.
(Chen Qin, Chief Economist of Business Big Data (BBD) and a key researcher of ESGDI)
According to Chen Qin, Chief Economist of Business Big Data (BBD) and a key researcher of ESGDI, ESGDI systematically evaluates the macroscopic development of ESG for the first time from the perspectives of environment, society and governance, includes more than 70 million entries of industrial and commercial data, environmental punishment data, action data and network search data of listed and non-listed companies, analyzes capital market attention through text, and provides valuable non-financial data reference to institutions and investors.
(Roundtable dialogue)
At the roundtable dialogue following the speeches, experts, scholars and enterprise representatives, including Jin Hainian, Chief Research Officer of Noah (China) Holdings Limited; Zhang Huaying, Vice President, Sustainability Greater China, Coca-Cola; Tang Weiqi, Vice President of the Macro Research Department of CIB Research; Guo Peiyuan, Chairman of Syn