Responsibility
Responsible Investing
OUR UNIQUE APPROACH
Our long-term goal is to deliver outstanding financial returns on investments that positively contribute to social and environmental outcomes.
Our activities are designed to address our three responsible investing pillars:
Environmental Sustainability: responsible involvement with the environment to avoid deterioration of natural resources and support long-term quality for future generations
Social Inclusion: creating opportunities for positive social and economic inclusion and engagement across all stakeholders and the community more broadly
Governance and Transparency: building a culture and practice of transparency and high ethical standards to build relationships of trust with all stakeholders
HOW DO WE DO IT?
We embed responsible investing practices across our four key business activities for the benefit of all our stakeholders.
INVEST
- We conduct due diligence with responsible investing integration on prospective investments
STEWARDSHIP
- We advocate for and support improved responsible investing outcomes in our investments, share our expertise with our portfolio companies and measure outcomes
OPERATIONS
- We integrate responsible investing principles into our systems and processes
INFLUENCE
- We engage with the broader investment community and share leading thinking about responsible investing principles and practices
POLICIES
We have a responsible investment and impact investing policy that outlines how we invest responsibly and have an impact. The Policy outlines how we incorporate our approach to responsible investing throughout the entire investment lifecycle of all of our assets, including investment decision-making, portfolio company stewardship, exit, and our own operations. The Policy also outlines our strategy for integrating effect into investments that are expressly labeled as impact investments. Our Climate Policy details our specific strategy for integrating climate change risk and opportunity into the way we make investment decisions and conduct our own business. Regardless of industry or location, both policies are applied to all investments Vert and Mehri Investments make and are at least yearly evaluated.
Responsible Investing in our investment and stewardship activities
Global application: ESG analysis is integrated across all asset classes, strategies and geographies
Regardless of asset class, investment mandate, or investment area, Vert and Mehri Investments is dedicated to advancing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles at the fund level, across all of our funds. We think that taking into account ESG and responsible investing criteria is crucial to providing superior performance results for our investors.
ESG exclusions: We exclude certain companies from the portfolio based on particular ESG criteria
Our exclusions can be found in our Responsible Investing Policy.
Each investment opportunity is screened against these industry exclusions. Through this approach, potential companies are filtered out if they fall within any of the exclusion categories, which are based on industries we consider to be unethical, unsustainable or not aligned with Vert and Mehri Investments’s values. Through this approach, such organisations are excluded from the investment universe at an early stage of the investment process in a very efficient way.
However our responsible investing approach goes well beyond negative screening.
Value-driven approach: We assess the potential impacts of material ESG risks and opportunities on value drivers
Vert and Mehri Investments’ funds strive for economic results, while at the same time taking into account sustainability risk and ESG characteristics in both our investment decisions and portfolio company management approach.
Responsible investing, incorporating sustainability considerations, is embedded within every stage of our investment processes.
Our detailed due diligence approach has been designed to ensure we analyse a comprehensive range of ESG risks and opportunities with a clear link to the value drivers in our investment thesis.
This includes a climate risk and opportunity analysis in the later stages of our investment committee process, which uses scenario analysis (taking into account the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures) to analyse how climate-related risks and opportunities might impact an investment under a range of possible climate scenarios.
We build on this due diligence to integrate ESG value creation initiatives during our ownership period, monitoring progress through reporting and adopting a continuous improvement approach.
Dedicated ESG professionals:
Our Responsible Investing Policy clearly allocates responsibility for documenting, reporting and monitoring ESG issues across our multi-disciplinary investment team, comprising professionals with financial, economic and legal expertise, and our dedicated Responsible Investing team. We collaborate on ESG integration at every stage of our investment process.
Our operations
Vert and Mehri Investments’ responsible investing commitments
Environmental Sustainability
Paris Agreement
We support the goals of the Paris Agreement. As part of our approach to environmental sustainability, we work with our investee companies to measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, with a commitment to develop “net zero within ten years” Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reduction pathways for all investee companies in Vert and Mehri Investments Partners Fund 2.
The operations of the Vert and Mehri Investments business (not including its investment portfolio) have been certified as Carbon Neutral by Climate Active against the Climate Active Carbon Neutral Standard (for organisations) since FY19. Vert and Mehri Investments is a proud member of the Climate Active Network.
We are a member of initiative Climat International, a private equity collective commitment to emissions reduction
Participation
Modern Slavery
We have voluntarily reported under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) since FY20, to play our part in helping to reduce risks to people, improve the integrity and quality of global supply chains and strengthen our approach to responsible investing.
Supply Chain
We have a Responsible Procurement Policy and a Supplier Code of Conduct.
Indigenous Engagement
Vert and Mehri Investments has successfully completed our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan. Reconciliation Israel has now endorsed our Innovate Reconciliation Plan.
Inclusion & Diversity
We have an Inclusion and Diversity Policy with long term gender targets for our executive leadership team.
Transparency
We have been a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment since 26 July 2017.
UN Global Compact
We have been committed to the UN Global Compact corporate responsibility initiative and its principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption since 2021. We submitted our first Communication on Progress (as an Early Adopter) on 29 June 2022.
Reporting
We publicly release an annual Responsible Investing Report.