Scientific Beta

Benefits and Pensions Monitor: "There are no practical or academic grounds for the idea that a broad cap-weighted index representing all investment opportunities cannot as a result contain an ESG filter by default, says Professor Noël Amenc, CEO of Scientific Beta. (...) In addition, as a venture by an academic institution, Scientific Beta clearly affirms that the argument that would have one believe that the cap-weighted index is the representation of the theoretical true market portfolio has no scientific credibility."

Benefits and Pensions Monitor 22/02/2019

"(...) There are no practical or academic grounds for the idea that a broad cap-weighted index representing all investment opportunities cannot as a result contain an ESG filter by default, says Professor Noël Amenc, CEO of Scientific Beta. In response to Swiss Sustainable Finance’s call for global index providers to exclude controversial weapons from their mainstream indices in order to align their products with what has become standard practice or expectation among institutional and individual investors, he says from a practical point of view, the exclusions on controversial weapons represent a very marginal weight that in any event is far lower than the exclusions or weight limitations implemented by all index providers to guarantee the liquidity and investability of their global cap-weighted indices. In addition, as a venture by an academic institution, Scientific Beta clearly affirms that the argument that would have one believe that the cap-weighted index is the representation of the theoretical true market portfolio has no scientific credibility. While it knows that the cap-weighted index is ultimately an index like any other that has the particular virtue of providing the weighted average performance of the market, excluding stocks that represent controversial weapons would not affect this average significantly. (...)"