● Offices in London and Philadelphia
Indeed Mondrian Investment Partners runs three ESG funds – two in equities and a recently launched green bond fund. But for Gillmore ESG involves more hard choices than its advocates generally allow.
“I’m with everyone else. I am not against ESG per se,” he says. However, he goes on to add an important caveat on how he thinks it should be viewed. “It is not as simple as saying ‘let’s just have free-form ESG and get on with it’.”
To illustrate his point, he conducts a thought experiment involving a market with only two investable companies – an angelic technology firm with perfect ESG credentials and a coal company immersed in what many would regard as sinful behaviour.
Clive Gillmore is a rarity nowadays among asset management CEOs in that he is keen to discuss what he sees as the difficult moral choices embodied in ESG investment