The 2024 general meetings of the Ethos Foundation and Ethos Services were held this Thursday, June 13 in Bern. The current members of the councils were all re-elected.
The 2024 general meetings of the Ethos Foundation and Ethos Services were held this Thursday, June 13 in Bern. The members of the Foundation and the shareholders of Ethos Services approved all items on the agenda. In particular, all council members were re-elected for an additional year. The sustainability and climate report, which presents in particular the measures put in place by Ethos to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, was also submitted to a vote – voluntarily – and was approved by all members and shareholders. The general meetings also approved the proposal to change the auditor following a call for tenders carried out after 10 years of mandate from Deloitte. BDO has been elected and will be the new auditor for the accounts of the Ethos Foundation and Ethos Services from the 2024 financial year. Both the Foundation and Ethos Services are voluntarily submitting to an extensive review.
Like every year, this meeting was also an opportunity for the members of the Ethos Foundation and the shareholders of Ethos Services, the majority of which are Swiss pension funds, to learn about and discuss current ESG themes. For this 2024 edition, it was the director of ASIP Mr. Lukas Müller-Brunner who presented the new ESG reporting standards for the members of his association. He notably explained why such reporting was necessary today and shared certain feedback and practical experiences from ASIP members.
Subsequently, two workshops were offered alternately to members of the Foundation and shareholders of Ethos Services with the common objective of raising their awareness of the issues of sustainable finance and socially responsible investment.
The founder and director of Investor Impact Initiative Eleanor Willi presented the results of a study published in March and devoted to the vote of asset managers at AGMs on points related to climate and environmental issues. A study which demonstrated without great surprise that there is too often a significant gap between the preferences of asset owners, generally favorable to sustainability, and the votes executed on their behalf by managers. She took the opportunity to remind representatives of pension funds that they can require their managers to exercise their shareholder rights in accordance with their principles and their will.
Ethos presents its new training programs
The second workshop was led by Cécile Biccari, who joined the Ethos Foundation at the start of the year as Senior Manager Investor Education. She detailed the new training modules dedicated to sustainable finance that Ethos will soon launch and presented the online platform on which these modules will be available. If these training courses are intended in particular for representatives of pension institutions (foundation board, management, etc.), they will also be aimed at all people, active or not in the finance industry, who would like to acquire the knowledge necessary to invest in a more sustainable and responsible manner.
These training courses are part of the Foundation’s goals, namely raising awareness and promoting the principles of sustainable development and good governance in investment activities. The first basic modules, devoted to the main principles of sustainability and the fiduciary responsibility of institutional investors, will be available from the start of the second half of 2024 while the following three modules, devoted to regulation, active shareholding and investment decisions, will be launched during the fourth quarter.
