Away from the beach, the big maneuvers continue in the asset management industry. Goldman Sachs announced Thursday, August 19, the signing of an agreement with Dutch insurer NN Group to acquire its management subsidiary NN Investment Partners for “Around 1.6 billion euros”. The Hague firm employs 900 people and oversees $ 355 billion (€ 304 billion) in assets. Thanks to this operation, Goldman Sachs, which manages 2.3 trillion dollars, more than doubles the size of its portfolios in Europe, which will total 600 billion dollars.
Above all, the Wall Street bank is strengthening its expertise in the field of responsible investment, based on taking into account the famous ESG criteria (environmental, social and governance) on which Europe remains one step ahead of in the USA. “NN Investment Partners is one of the best placed managers in Europe on ESG and 75% of its assets under management are subject to an ESG analysis”, insists Goldman Sachs in a press release.
The idea of submitting financial investments to the filter of ethical criteria originally came from religious congregations, but this approach was then developed by European management companies, in particular in the Netherlands and in the Scandinavian countries. In 2018, the European Commission published a roadmap to put finance at the service of its environmental and social policy. Consequence: European players manage much more sustainable funds than their competitors in the United States, yet by far the world’s leading savings market.
Strong pressure on margins
These sustainable funds, which were still a niche market three years ago, have grown “Stratospheric”, until reaching $ 2.3 trillion at the end of June 2021, according to Morningstar, a company specializing in the analysis of investment funds. Even conventional finance is increasingly integrating an ESG vision into its stock selection process. The Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend, as has the arrival at the White House in January of Democrat Joe Biden, one of whose first decisions was to sign the return of the States. United in the Paris climate agreement.
“Responsible investing continues to be a priority for asset managers, especially as investors become more and more interested in environmental, social and governance issues, and in addition to the Biden administration emphasis on sustainable investment ”, underline the experts of the firm PwC, in a study published in June 2021.
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