09:00 - 10:45

Paolo Sardi (Luxembourg)
Founding Member and Chief Executive Officer - ECPI

The MARS® Methodology

ECPI MARS Methodology

ECPI MARS® (Manager’s Alpha and Risk Score) is a rule-based rating model adapted to the hedge fund industry. By focusing mainly on operational issues of a hedge fund or fund of hedge funds, MARS tries to identify a manager’s alpha generation ability and to mitigate the fund-specific blow-up risk involved in an investment.

The MARS® approach shifts the sustainability assessment from the portfolio level to the fund level and is based on an overview of the Hedge Fund Manager under screening: Corporate Strategy Sustainability: what the managers do within their core business · Daily Operational Sustainability: how they perform daily tasks and duties through a comprehensive analysis of a broad range of sources of information, both internal and external. Furthermore, the corporate strategy and daily operational screening criteria include a number of categories, aspects and indicators, with a progressive level of details.

Since 2006 ECPI Hedge Fund Division has been monitoring more than 360 hedge funds and funds of hedge funds through its database, and this number grows quickly with new mandates from clients. ECPI also issues semiannual MARS Report on hedge funds or funds of hedge funds at the clients requests.

Michael Liebreich (United Kingdom)
Chief Executive Officer and Founder - New Energy Finance

Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment

Yukiko Fukasaku (France)
Managing Director - Innovmond SARL

Corporate Social Responsibility in the European Union: Strategy and Practice

How has corporate social responsibility (CSR) evolved as a policy instrument in the regional strategy of the European Union?
What are the characteristics of CSR practices in Europe?

The presentation discusses how corporate social responsibility (CSR) evolved as a policy instrument in the regional strategy of the European Union. During the 1990s it was taken up in the EU policy agenda as an instrument to promote the European ‘social model’. In 2000, CSR became a central policy instrument to achieve the Lisbon Strategy for growth and employment, indicating that CSR was viewed as a corporate strategy that could enhance European economic competitiveness through improvements in the triple bottom line. The wide discussion that the European Commission launched in this decade gave rise to a view of CSR as a voluntary activity of businesses that is shaped through multi-stakeholder involvement. Promoting CSR is increasingly mainstreamed in the different policy areas of the European Union. European firms are eagerly practicing CSR in innovative ways. The presentation discusses how CSR is practiced by some European multinational enterprises based in France. CSR strategies and practices in Europe could present useful lessons for policy makers and companies in other regions of the world.

César De Brito (France)
Partner - Eco Responsible Capital Partners

Investing as a Private Equity Investor in Listed Environmental Companies

After the market turmoil in 2008, most of the environmental stocks prices have collapsed, bringing market capitalizations to unseen levels and creating huge opportunities. Why do we think
this segment has become the most attractive today? How can you tap this opportunity in your asset allocation?