There is innovation and there is the zeitgeist, capturing those elements that identify indisputably the tone of the times, and it looks like Beyond Advisors has pretty much nailed it.
The company is a Jersey-based and owned by three investment professionals who have developed screening policies and created a disciplined and repeatable process for indices that satisfy the investing preference of vegans, With no irony, the company could be referred by the acronym BA, despite its further perhaps spiritual aim of integrating climate change and environmental pollution as a matter of concern.
Forgiving an amusing although almost pointless shortening of acronyms, what will be on offer will come in the form of the ticker VEGN, which will follow the completed registration of the US Vegan Climate ETF, which the company anticipates will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in January 2019.
The ETF will track the US Vegan Climate Index, which was launched by Beyond Advisors in June 2018. Since then, it has been independently calculated and published real-time by Solactive with index prices published real-time by the Stuttgart Stock Exchange, and on Bloomberg and Reuters terminals under the extended VEGAN ticker as well as reported daily on the index provider’s website.
The index is a passive, rules-based benchmark of the 500 stocks in the Solactive US Large Cap Index, screened according to vegan and climate-conscious principles, excluding the shares of companies whose business activities include the following: Animals (animal testing; animal-derived products, animal farming, and other exploitation activities; animals in sport and entertainment; and research, development, and use of genetically engineered animals); Planet (extraction or refining, or services principally related to the extraction or refining, of fossil fuels; burning of fossil fuels for energy production; other activities having a significant negative environmental impact (eg. high carbon intensity activities, high climate change impact, habitat destruction), unless the applicable company undertakes positive initiatives that effectively address those impacts); and People (tobacco products; armaments and products specifically designed for military and defence uses; and contributions to the abuse of human rights or lack of robust, detailed, and independently published policies covering human rights and child/forced labour.
‘The depth and breadth of the ethical research involves a deep dive into a company's activities, subsidiaries and products to arrive at a Pass, Fail and, where appropriate, to identify as a candidate for ongoing engagement,’ stated Lee Coates, head of ethical screening at BA, in a release. ‘This level of scrutiny has not, as far as we are aware, ever been as deeply embedded in the investment philosophy of a financial product.’
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published on 8 October 2018 encouraged rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society to maintain temperature rise below 1.5 degrees centigrade, with actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions including a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and protection of forests at risk from the demands of animal production. Livestock was already found in the study published by the WorldWatch Institute to be responsible for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions.
To those still reading, the expense ratio is estimated at 0.60%, a small price to pay for putting some of your hard-earned cash or casually accepted inheritance in something so squeaky green it almost hurts.
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