2023 Year in Review
Part of our role as the Thoughtful Investor ® involves raising awareness and speaking out about environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that may be relevant to our clients. We also expect Co-owners to be responsible corporate citizens, supporting local communities and adhering to the same high standards we expect from the firms we invest in.
Throughout 2023, Castlefield Co-owners have published a range of blog articles, reports, research and opinion pieces to reflect this. We’ve hand-picked a selection of some of the most popular Media pieces from the last twelve months.
Engagement with Whitbread on workplace mental health and wellbeing
As a signatory to the CCLA Corporate Mental Health Benchmark, we led an engagement with leading hotel and restaurant group Whitbread.
In this Castlefield sustainable stock feature, Ellie Walley covers the company’s existing approach to workplace mental health and some key recommendations identified for improvement.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/blog/castlefield-stock-story-whitbread/
Award winning Castlefield
2023 saw Castlefield being recognised in many awards shortlists, for our sustainable fund range, ESG focus and client service.
We're delighted that Castlefield was named as the winners of the 'Best ESG Adviser' at the ESG Clarity awards 2023, along with being named as the winners of the Best Adviser Firm for ESG - nationwide category at the 2023 Professional Adviser Awards.
For the ESG Clarity award, we received the following judge's comment: "Longstanding track record and reputation in the UK as a specialist ESG financial planner and investment manager, while signs also of becoming more of a public thought leader within the UK industry"
You can read more about these and more at this link below.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/awards-recognition/
"Longstanding track record and reputation in the UK as a specialist ESG financial planner and investment manager, while signs also of becoming more of a public thought leader within the UK industry"
New fund manager introduces ASML
In September 2023, we welcomed our new fund manager James Buckley to manage the Castlefield sustainable European Fund.
For his first featured stock piece, James introduced semiconductor manufacturer ASML - the innovative leader driving the semiconductor and microchip industry.
ASML describe themselves as “The most important technology company you’ve never heard of”, which reflects their relatively low profile as an IT hardware supplier, rather than a consumer-facing tech company like Apple or Facebook.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/blog/castlefield-stock-story-asml/
ASML “The most important technology company you’ve never heard of”
New regulation introduced - Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR)
With an increased demand for sustainable investment over recent years, financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has sought to make it easier and more transparent for investors to understand the sustainability features of investment funds (and related financial products).
As part of this process, the FCA conducted an extensive consultation across the sector. We submitted our response to the consultation and published this openly on our website, broadly supporting the proposed measures. In the interests of transparency, we made our full response publicly available here:
Castlefield partner, Ita McMahon shared her thoughts with FTAdviser on our response. She also shared views on how the FCA could go further to make it easier for investors to see which firms devote a high proportion of their time and resources to investing sustainably.
You can read the full piece on FTAdviser here: https://www.ftadviser.com/investments/2023/01/27/esg-specialist-castlefield-urges-greater-clarity-from-fca/
Subsequently, the FCA finally published its long-awaited rules to curb greenwashing in investments and labelling regime for sustainable funds. Castlefield's Ita McMahon was again invited to share her response to the announcement with FTAdviser. You can read the interview in this piece:
Matt Ralph was also asked to share his thoughts on the SDR regulation, from an adviser perspective, with ESG Clarity. He welcomed plans to establish an independent working group to support advisers – which you can read about in this piece:
Reporting on stewardship and the sustainability of our funds
Earlier this year we introduced our first Sustainability Review.
The Castlefield Funds Sustainability Review 2023 included an independent analysis of the ESG performance of our sustainable fund range along with a breakdown of the positive theme allocation for each fund - using specific case examples of typical holdings to show how positive themes and authentic investment approach work in practice.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/news/castlefield-funds-sustainability-review/
Calling on the Government to uphold its Net-Zero commitments
Alongside the engagement work we conduct with investee companies, we are also actively engaged with Government and campaign groups around relevant ESG issues.
We recently co-signed three letters to the Prime Minister, highlighting the need for a clearer policy landscape to deliver on its net-zero ambitions, as well as opposing recent announcements that signal a weakening of key climate policies.
In this piece, Castlefield Partner Ita McMahon summarises the different approaches taken.
Bumper year for the Castlefield Charity Give Back Group
Castlefield's charity Give Back Group have also had an excellent 2023, organising a series of events and activities throughout the year to fundraise for our chosen charities.
In May, six Castlefield Co-owners ran 10k at the Great Manchester Run 2023, successfully raising over £650 for charity.
June saw the long-running Activity Challenge, which involved co-owners recording their activity hours over a two-week period. But then at the beginning of September our biggest challenge to date happened.
The Big Castlefield Cycle Challenge was a week-long event, involving co-owners to pedal over 400-miles from Manchester to Paris on a stationary bike. Nyle Yates gave a rundown of our biggest fundraising event to date - ‘The Big Castlefield Cycle Challenge’.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/charity-work/castlefield-co-owners-celebrate-cycle-challenge-success/
UN Climate Conference COP28 in review
At the end of another year of extreme weather events across the world, the UN Climate Conference COP28 took place in Dubai, with the great and the good jetting in to talk all things climate.
Castlefield's David Gorman reviewed the outcomes from the COP28 talks and considered if they aligned with pre-conference expectations in this article.
https://www.castlefield.com/home/media/blog/cop28-in-review/
Diversity and inclusion engagement around product design
One of our most popular pieces this year was about inclusive product design – how companies need to embrace the diversity of consumers they are selling to, in order to design more suitable products. For example, most smartphones are too big to fit comfortably into the average woman's hand. Or the fact that some automatic taps, hand dryers and soap dispensers in public bathrooms have difficulties detecting the hands of darker skinned users - as they have been modelled to work for white-skinned hands.
In this piece for Investment Week, Ellie Walley looked at why engaging with investee firms on inclusive product design is crucial.