The frontier of ESG Investing: Kairos at Salone.SRI 2022

The seventh edition of Salone.SRI, the event dedicated to the world of sustainable investments organized by ETicaNews, took place on 15 November.

Kairos Partners SGR renewed its membership for the third consecutive year with the participation in the panel of speakers of Riccardo Valeri, Portfolio Manager of KIS ActivESG, a cutting-edge product for its long-short ESG investment strategy which has recently reached its third year of track record.
Valeri, alongside Dario Savoia, secretary general of ACEPI (Italian Association of investment certificates and products), spoke at the conference entitled “Structured Finance and ESG: value beyond the legislation”,

The meeting explored the effects that the regulatory tsunami of Taxonomy and SFDR had on the various market players both from the point of view of the ESG certifying body and the one of the asset managers, both involved in slaloming amid the many guidelines often incomplete and of ambiguous interpretation.

If 2020 was the year of the rise of ESG products, and 2021 that of their explosion in terms of volumes, 2022 was a year of regulatory tightening and market pressure in which it became important to learn how to distinguish “ESG from ESG”: quoting the title of this year’s show, “It’s time to weigh products, strategies and players”.

As underlined by the Portfolio Manager, ESG funds are now commonplace throughout Europe, reaching, according to recent estimates, more than half of all investment solutions on the market (source Morningstar data). Consequently, today it becomes essential, on the one hand, for the investor, to know how to recognize the different ESG solutions on the market (article 8 or 9 of the SFDR) and on the other, for an asset manager, to know how to “anticipate” the regulation and stand out on the market by providing effective and innovative solutions at the frontier of sustainable investments.

“For us, the short, in addition to hedging the exposure and allowing portfolio risk management, represents a way more effective tool for active investing encouraging companies to move in the right direction in terms of sustainability if compared to a traditional ESG-long only investment” stated Riccardo Valeri.

More information is available on the event website.