Welcome to our #142 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we highlight Euronext’s launch of eurozone and France equity indices targeting gender equality as ‘first pillars’ addressing gender balance in the workplace.
The new index family comes in response to increased investor demand for socially-conscious investments.
Gender lens investing is a strategy that seeks to achieve a market rate of return, by investing in businesses that demonstrate the promotion of gender equality opportunities for women as employees, as business owners and as consumers.
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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Jana
Gender lens investing: Euronext launches indices to invest in companies with strong gender equality performance
The new index family enables gender lens investments.
Euronext, in partnership with Equileap, has launched eurozone and France equity indices targeting gender equality as ‘first pillars’ addressing gender balance in the workplace, as reported by ETF Stream.
The new index family comes in response to increased investor demand for socially-conscious investments.
What is gender lens investing?
Gender lens investing is a strategy that seeks to achieve a market rate of return, by investing in businesses that demonstrate the promotion of gender equality opportunities for women as employees, as business owners and as consumers.
Women-owned businesses and gender conscious businesses require a full spectrum of capital which includes public equity and debt and private equity and debt.
According to Parallelle Finance, there are 27 gender lens global and regional equity funds available to individual investors. (Read more here).
Brief market overview: why is this a growth area?
There are several dynamics driving continued long-term growth.
The first of these is that gender lens is a thematic ESG (environmental, social and governance) strategy. And ESG has been seeing very strong AUM.
This is a growth driver for gender lens as a thematic strategy.
There is also growing investor awareness of the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in public companies. There are growing demands around this which is seen in an increasing number of shareholder proposals on diversity and equality issues.
Also, there is a unique growth and long term performance opportunity for gender lens funds and investments.
Gender balance in the workplace
Research has demonstrated many benefits associated with higher levels of gender diversity in corporate leadership.
These benefits include:
superior performance
better operational metrics
improved risk and fraud management
improve decision-making (and many other areas).
In fact, a recent MSCI report found that gender diverse companies had better records on reducing carbon emissions.
Corporate gender equality is an important element to closing those deep gender gaps in the global economy.
Investors committed to sustainable investing should be seeking to capture the performance and other benefits of the gender lens approach.
The Euronext Equileap Gender Equality Eurozone 100 index…
… and Euronext Equileap Gender Equality France 40 index will offer exposure to the top-performing companies in target regions based on Equileap scoring on:
gender balance in leadership and workforce
equal compensation and work-life balance
policies promoting gender equality and commitment
transparency and accountability.
Diana van Maasdijk, CEO at Equileap, has said:
“It appears that high-performing companies with the drive to do the right thing when it comes to addressing gender equality at work apply the same ethos to other key ESG criteria.
“Investors looking to create a better society with equal opportunities for women at work can now use these indices to back high-quality, high-performing companies.”
What next? (Re) listen to The Purse Podcast:
#48: Gender lens equity investing and women in leadership with Angela Atherton
#60 Gender lens investing and the gender lens scorecard with Marypat Smucker
News in Brief
Financial news
The US Federal Reserve deleveraging continues as balance sheet keeps shrinking. Total assets dropped by $37bn in the past week to $8,584.6bn, the lowest level since Nov 2021. The Fed balance sheet equates to 33.4% vs ECB's 78%, BoJ's 128%.
Yield curve inversion reaches new extremes: US 10y yields have fallen further below those on short-term bonds than at any time in decades
Jerome Powell says Federal Reserve’s rate hikes could slow as soon as December.
Eurozone inflation slowed for 1st time in 1.5yrs in sign of hope for the European Central Bank (ECB). Nov CPI dropped to 10% from 10.6% in Oct while Core CPI remained steady at 5%. Money markets are pricing ~56bps of rate hike in Dec.
Britain’s growth potential has fallen behind every large economy except Mexico due to collapsing productivity and severe labor market shortages. Dismal picture helps explain why UK faces a sharp squeeze on household incomes and highest tax burden since WWII.
UK house prices fall at fastest rate in two years. Average house prices fell by 1.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis in November, figures just released by Nationwide building society show.
Brexit added nearly £6bn to UK food bills in two years, research finds. Cost of food imported from EU rose because of extra red tape, with poorest most affected.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs
Bitcoin set for more losses in wake of FTX’s collapse if history is a guide. Weak December almost always follows November losses in token. (See current BTC price).
Bitcoin and ether dip following US job figures. Non-farm payrolls in the U.S. came in at 263,000, above estimates of 200,000. Bitcoin and ether fell sharply following the release. Bitcoin experienced a sharp sell-off following the news, falling below $17,000 by 9:45 a.m. to $16,918, according to TradingView. Ether was flat over the past 24 hours, trading around $1,284.
On Nov. 28, crypto lender BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after earlier announcing that it had paused withdrawals.
Kraken announced on Nov. 30 that it was cutting 1,100 staffers after saying in June that it had no plans to adjust hiring goals.
Genesis owes $900 million to Gemini customers. The crypto exchange is attempting to recover the funds, the Financial Times reported.
Alameda invested $1.15 billion into crypto miner Genesis. The crypto mining company isn’t related to Genesis Trading, whose lending unit suspended redemptions in the wake of FTX’s collapse.
Coffee Break? Read This
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