City Hive, the think tank and advocacy group, has launched ACT, a standard of corporate culture for investment companies, chaired by City Hive’s CEO Bev Shah, and Chief Strategist Mandy Kirby.
ACT, standing for ‘Action, Challenge, and Transparency’, is a standard of corporate culture designed to help investment companies demonstrate movement towards more diverse, equitable and inclusive firms. ACT enables companies to show alignment between external and internal values; between beliefs and behaviours.
There are 15 founding signatories to ACT, including Schroders, Lombard Odier Investment Management, M&G, Aviva Investors, Mirabaud Investments, AssetCo, Federated Hermes, WHEB, BlueBay Asset Management, Radiant ESG, TT International Asset Management, Invesco & Snowball IM. The founding signatories have a combined AUM of ~£6.5 trillion.
Crucially, ACT provides professional investors with a framework to assess, measure, and be a catalyst for change. It is a tool to diminish greenwashing, going beyond product level to assess an entire company. ACT is designed to become a core element of a due diligence process, measuring culture and diversity as standalone pillars of the ESG universe.
