Insight

This year’s Investor Day was a great success, held again at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in London. 

Our keynote speaker, Professor Graham MacGregor who is chairman of Action on Sugar and also a professor of cardiovascular medicine, championed the reduction of salt and sugar in our food.

Claire Hughes, head of nutrition and science at Marks & Spencer, explained how a customer-focused strategy helping consumers balance their dietary needs is driving the company’s ambition to become the leading retailer for healthy eating.

Fiona Watson, an independent nutrition consultant, observed how obesity has overtaken undernutrition as a global impediment to human wellbeing and highlighted the considerable protections and subsidies that exist to incentivise large-scale sugar production.

Kate Elliot, a senior ethical researcher at Rathbone Greenbank Investments, discussed how the team tracks widely-diverse nutritional trends and assesses risks and opportunities presented by regulation, consumer habits and sugar usage and consumption.

Matt Crossman, engagement manager at Rathbone Greenbank Investments, discusses our responsibility to actively engage with companies on high profile issues and sustain ethical and social values throughout a clients’ investment.

The topic of healthy and sustainable food has been an area of interest to the Greenbank team for many years, but the problems caused by the increasing amounts of sugar in our diets have made it a more pressing concern.

Developments in battery technology are driving the penetration of electric vehicles and adoption of alternative energy. 

At the Responsible Investor awards, held in London on 6 June 2017, the Collaborations award in the inaugural Innovation & Industry Leadership category was given to the ‘Aiming for A’ initiative.

Along with CCLA, the Church Commissioners, the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum and Hermes EOS, Rathbone Greenbank is proud to have played its part in this effort to engage the extractives industry to focus on strategic resilience in an increasingly carbon-constrained world to 2035 and beyond.