Liontrust engagement and voting report 2021 - Flipbook - Page 4
Link to strategy
The first pillar of our strategy is to be a responsible company and
investor. Asset managers have a key role to play in providing the
capital to enable businesses to grow and to help investors to achieve
their financial objectives.
It is important for us to support businesses and innovative
companies, allocating capital towards positive outcomes and
delivering products and services that benefit the economy and
society. Liontrust aims to achieve this by using active management
and proprietary investment processes to identify companies that
can generate sustainable growth and by investing in businesses for
the long term.
Liontrust is committed to environmental, social and governance
(ESG) initiatives. We provide the tools to empower all our investment
managers to consider ESG in their decision-making processes and
to continue developing a risk analysis framework that captures
and evaluates environmental and social controversies. The Liontrust
Sustainability Report (which is available on our website) shows how
we have built sustainability into our business and have been a
responsible and transparent investor, employer and good corporate
citizen.
Liontrust takes engagement and voting very seriously. We aim
to vote all our shares wherever possible and to encourage our
investee companies to adopt best market practices. As stewards
of our clients’ capital, we recognise the important responsibility we
have regarding our investee company holdings and our potential to
influence positive change via engagement on ESG matters.
In 2021, Liontrust had six investment teams that each ran its own
independent investment process based on the team’s philosophy.
These teams’ AuMA were:
Sustainable Investment
39%
Economic Advantage
27%
Multi-Asset
20%
Global Equity
9%
Cashflow Solution
3%
Global Fixed Income
2%
4 - Liontrust: Engagement and Voting Report 2021
A seventh team, Global Fundamental, was added on 1 April 2022
with the acquisition of Majedie Asset Management.
Liontrust does not impose a one-size-fits-all approach to integrating
stewardship and ESG risk into its investment processes; we work
with all our investment teams to help ensure the best outcomes
for all. By including ESG considerations into these processes,
we improve our ability to understand a business and its ability to
create, sustain and protect value and deliver outcomes in line with
our clients’ expectations.
Liontrust’s approach is engagement-led: the integration of ESG
factors alone does not prohibit any investments by our funds and
strategies but we will engage where we have material concerns,
and we will push for positive change.
Since 2017, Liontrust has increasingly applied ‘sustainability’
requirements to itself and has committed to integrating it
appropriately throughout the business. Liontrust believes that
it makes sense to centralise some of its stewardship activities to
increase their effectiveness and so a central Governance and
Stewardship team was established to co-ordinate the Group’s
overarching approach to sustainability risk. We continue to invest
in this team, which produces ESG reporting, climate and emissions
analysis, co-ordinates and implements voting policies and leads on
engaging in ESG matters at a company level.
In 2021, Liontrust hired a Stewardship Manager to drive a
centralised engagement strategy for all its investment teams
excluding the Sustainable Investment team. This report outlines
Liontrust’s firm-wide stewardship activities and outcomes throughout
2021, giving an overview on how we progressed against our
engagement priorities and providing case studies and engagement
and voting statistics.