Abstract:
Responsible investment combines shareholder’s objective of financial performance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues when making investment decisions. Responsible investment has become necessary because most companies neglect the impact of their operation on the environment; society while focusing on short-term profits. Moreover, the collapse of big companies due to poor governance also demand that they focus on the need to strengthen good corporate governance. This study examines whether SA mutual funds companies listed on the JSE incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in making investment decisions. The study further examines the relationship between selected ESG factors and financial performance measured using ROE. A total of 28 companies where SA mutual fund companies have invested their funds were sampled and studied between 2007 and 2017. Secondary data was used whereby raw data was collected from the annual, integrated and sustainability reports of the selected companies’ websites and the IRESS database. Although many ESG factors could influence responsible investment such as climate change, waste and pollution, deforestation, working conditions, local community, bribery and corruption, however, some of these factors cannot be easily quantified. Hence, this study focused on one component per ESG factor that can be quantified. All these factors are required to have a deeper understanding of responsible investment. This study adopts the quantitative research method and adds to the growing number of studies by examining the relationship between independent variables represented by water usage (environmental), employee health and safety cost (social) and gender diversity (governance) and dependent variable which is financial performance measured by ROE. The Stata statistical software utilising the panel data method was used to analyse the data. The
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study results show a positive and insignificant relationship between water usage and ROE, a positive an insignificant relationship between employee health and safety cost (number of work-related fatalities) and ROE and negative and insignificant relationship between the percentage of women on corporate boards and ROE. The results show that UN PRI guideline that encourages responsible investments is not followed by South African (SA) mutual fund companies. This study recommends that SA mutual funds companies follow the UN PRI educate different stakeholders as to the importance of incorporating ESG factors in business operations and the benefits thereof. Future studies can consider incorporating ESG indicators other the ones presented in this study.
