ESG & Impact

We are trusted advisers on applying impact investing and ESG principles to projects, corporate strategy and government policy, and communicating methodology and results through the highest profile events, media and social media.

Our work ranges from thought leadership advisory to Europe's biggest asset manager, Amundi, and impact investors like Leapfrog Investments and Bamboo Capital Partners, through to strategic consultancy at development finance institutions such as Africa Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and transformative projects such as Alluvial Agriculture, a leading smallholder farming collective, and Drugstoc, a company tackling counterfeit drugs. 

As one example, we worked with the Africa Finance Corporation to produce a white paper advocating a cohesive African policy approach on global net zero ahead of COP27. The paper was endorsed by the President of Ghana, Vice President of Nigeria, the President of Afreximbank, and the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) on Climate Change.

 

Read the white paper in full here: Roadmap to Africa's COP: A Pragmatic Path to Net Zero.

 

Through our outreach, the report featured centre stage at several high-profile forums in the run-up to COP, including the Bloomberg Emerging & Frontier Forum, Reuters Impact, The Financial Times Africa Summit, as well as the World Economic Forum. Read the full report here: How COP27 can help African nations bearing the brunt of climate change.

As a result of this combined with direct outreach, the paper was endorsed by the President of Ghana, the Vice President of Nigeria, the President of Afreximbank, and the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) on Climate Change, among other influential African leaders. It was among the more substantive reference points that helped Africa’s perspective take centre stage at COP27, which influenced the final agreement to establish a loss and damage fund.

 

As another example, we produced the first open-source white paper setting out clearly how a major investor was measuring and monitoring the environmental, social and governance impact of its portfolio companies.

 

The white paper, Impact is the New Normal, and can be viewed in full here:

 

We generated awareness through extensive top-tier media coverage and international investor events. This led directly to companies working in coordination with Actis to apply the same framework and principles to their own impact and ESG measurement approach.

We are currently working with Actis with the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) on a survey of asset owners, including the world’s largest pension funds and family offices, to gauge their priorities in impact investing and ESG, and the challenges they face in deploying capital.  

Our roadmap to ESG

 

Implementing ESG

• Key financial drivers?
• Opportunities for long-term value creation?
• Which ESG factors are integral to value creation?
• How do they relate to key metrics of financial performance?
• Adjust variables for ESG
• How is the company’s fair value impacted?
• What is the ESG impact on short-term and long-term financial performance?
• Which KPI’s can be used to measure a company’s performance on material ESG issues?
• Compared to its peers, what is the company’s overall relative ESG
  performance?