Portal for Sustainable Securities

26 April 2011. FRANKFURT (Frankfurt Stock Exchange). The information offer on sustainable securities aims at enabling you to include sustainability criteria into your individual investment strategies. For this purpose, we pool together all sustainable products tradable at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, i.e. equities, ETFs, investment funds and certificates, in an own section of our website addressing private investors as well as institutional investors, asset managers and consultants.

The portal is based on the assumption that investors occupying themselves with the issue of sustainability are looking for the so-called double returns: classic financial returns composed of dividends, interest and price gains on the hand and sustainability returns on the other. Sustainability as we understand it can be measured by means of three criteria, which in the meantime have become established on the international scale: the ESG criteria.

• E stands for Environmental, i.e. ecologically compatible business. This thematic complex analyses the ecological footprint, sustainable procurement or the consideration of ecological factors in the course of developing new products and services.
• S stands for Social, i.e. social responsibility. This includes a company’s relationship with its customers, suppliers, employees and society in general as well as its philanthropic and social commitment.
• G stands for Governance, i.e. business management policies as defined in the corporate governance guidelines. In this context, aspects such as executive board and management remuneration, the transparency of business management processes and similar factors are evaluated.

For several years, the market for sustainable securities has grown steadily at a very dynamic pace. According to figures released by the Eurosif association, the investment volume in sustainable investments has increased from EUR 500 million to EUR 1.2 billion in 2009. In Europe for instance, the market share of investments in sustainable funds was 9.3 percent in 2009 as measured by the overall investment volume of the European fund industry.

According to the Sustainable Financial Investment Forum, sustainable financial investments in the German-speaking countries alone increased by more than one third to over EUR 40 billion. This information offer considers itself as a transparency interface in this rapidly growing market.

Investors are able to select equities on the basis of their sustainability performance in compliance with their individual preferences. In this context, individual ESG components can be weighted individually, but also be represented in the form of an aggregated ESG performance indicator. As a result, the portal provides stock exchange-listed companies with the opportunity to make their commitment in the field of sustainability transparent to investors.

As far as funds and certificates are concerned, we rely on the classification from the specialist editorial team of our master data provider €uro Advisor and on the data provided by Ariva.

In addition to the selection of securities and equity-related key performance indicators, the information portal also offers market studies, research and news from the world of sustainability.

By means of the offer – a cross-group collaboration between the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Xetra, the index provider Stoxx and Corporate Responsibility – the Deutsche Börse Group wishes to respond to the increased significance of the sustainability issue and the growing demand for transparency voiced by various groups.

The section understands itself as an open model and will be extended on a step-by-step basis including the addition of further research providers. We look forward to your proposals and feedback on the service. Please write an e-mail to redaktion@deutsche-boerse.com or give us a phone call at +49 (0) 69 211 18310.