HSBC Global Asset Management Taiwan Ltd (匯豐中華投信) yesterday launched the nation’s first low-carbon fund, which invests in bonds issued by companies with lower carbon footprints, to satisfy local investors’ increasing appetite for responsible investment.
The asset management firm gauges companies’ carbon footprints by measuring their carbon intensity, which divides companies’ carbon emissions by their revenue, using data offered by third-party agencies such as S&P Trucost Ltd, chief investment officer Julian Lin (林經堯) told a news conference in Taipei.
“Although some customers might expect a low-carbon fund to invest only in green energy companies, that is not practical, as there are not enough corporate bonds issued by green energy firms and we need to diversify our portfolio by investing in companies in different industries,” Lin said.
The offshore fund, dubbed the “HSBC Global Investment Funds — Global Lower Carbon Bond,” generally prefers companies with low carbon intensities, such as financing or green energy firms, but it would not be interested in firms whose carbon intensities rank within the first decile in the same industries, Lin said.
“For example, while most financing firms emit little carbon dioxide when making money, we dropped an Irish leasing company as it owns jets and provides leasing services to airlines, which emit carbon dioxide,” he said.
Meanwhile, companies with higher carbon footprints could still be investment targets in if their footprints rank in the bottom 75th percentile, as there is a chance that they would improve their carbon footprint in the coming years, Lin said.
“Overall, we target companies with lower carbon emissions among all industries, as we believe that they can better tackle challenges from climate change and tighter supervisions from regulators worldwide,” he said.
The average carbon intensity of all firms the fund invests in stands at 91.16 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per US$1 million, 40 percent lower compared with the intensity of all firms in which HSBC’s global corporate bond fund invests.
HSBC Global Asset Management Taiwan would consider launching a locally domiciled fund linked to environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) objectives, depending on the popularity of the low-carbon fund, chairman Steve Lee (李選進) said.
“We have noticed that local investors have a bigger appetite for ESG investment this year,” he said.
“Although it is still unclear whether companies with good ESG performance are more profitable than others, it is clear that they usually have better risk management and higher risk awareness. So, they could weather volatility such as the COVID-19 pandemic better than [others], which might be the reason they are gaining popularity,” he said.
Including HSBC, a total of 11 asset management firms have launched or applied to the regulator to launch new funds linked to ESG objectives, indicating an increasing appetite among local investors, according to data compiled by the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts