ESG Investing in Fixed Income
Corporate bonds and equities of the same firm should share the same fundamentals, but does this preposition hold for the ESG scores and their implications? In the equity market, there is convincing literature that states that ESG scores lower risks or even can improve the performance of portfolios. However, it was shown that the ESG implications could not be universally applied to all countries and their markets. Novel research by Slimane et al. (2020) examines the role of the ESG in the fixed market. The paper shows that the fixed income market is probably some years behind the equity market, but the ESG is also emerging in the fixed income. The performance of ESG outperformers compared to underperformers is continually rising. In Europe, the difference is already economically significant; the rest of the world seems to lag a little. Therefore, the ESG might have a bright future also in the corporate bond market. So far, the results are promising…
