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Thomas Heidstra Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

What are the benefits of sustainable investing? Many pension funds look to focus on that angle to reflect their company’s good governance, but face many challenges while doing that. A portfolio manager at Univest, a large Dutch pension fund, discusses this issue during the recent Opalesque Amsterdam Roundtable, as well as some other changes the pension fund has recently made. A fund manager who has just launched a new sustainable fund of funds, says he cannot find an interesting ESG (environmental, social and governance) hedge fund, and another prefers to implement ESG into his risk management framework only as ESG is no alpha generator. So there is a need for good, alpha generating ESG hedge funds that don't just go by the boxing-ticking governance process.

Univest Company, the in-house investment service for the Unilever Pension Funds, manages about $35bn worldwide, of which $1.3bn in hedge funds. According to Thomas Heidstra, Portfolio Manager Hedge Funds at Univest based in the Netherlands, the pension fund has been making quite a few changes over the last twelve months. For a start, they have applied a beta constraint in their hedge fund portfolio of 0.2. Then they have transitioned away from funds of funds – due to lack of control and transparency and high costs - to direct hedge fund investments. They hired a new due diligence ......................

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