ESG & sustainability

Our ESG & sustainability ethos

ESG & sustainability services

Our current economic system has brought unprecedented levels of welfare and prosperity. Yet it is clear to all of us that the ways we produce, consume and finance will have to change.

At MJ Hudson, we believe that investors play an important role in this transition. By working with investors, asset managers and corporate clients to embed and strengthen their approach to sustainability, we aim to drive positive change across the investment space: firstly, through a better understanding of the impacts of investment activity on climate change, ecosystems, and society; and, secondly, to challenge investors to reduce these impacts, while capturing the opportunities that the transition provides. We support investors in this role, and we enable them to act upon regulatory and stakeholder requirements.

MJ Hudson’s ESG & sustainability team supports investors in the design and implementation of responsible investment strategies, ranging from negative screening to impact, throughout their investment process. We also aid clients with the integration of these strategies into their core operations.

With over 10 years of experience in ESG and responsible investment, we assist a wide array of firms, including private market funds, traditional asset managers, institutional investors, and family offices.

To find out more about our ESG services, please click here.

Climate risk

We are committed to minimising the societal and environmental impacts of climate change and view tackling it as a priority for our stakeholders and our business. We believe our services can support both our clients and the industry in the transition to a low-carbon economy. 

We aim to lead by example and publicly support the TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) and its disclosure framework, while critically assessing our operations to limit the potential impact. We are developing a TCFD-aligned reporting approach and have analysed the four TCFD pillars: governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets. We continue to identify climate-related risks and strategise to mitigate them appropriately, while maximising potential opportunities for positive impact. Our analysis considers a range of climate-related scenarios over varying time horizons and degrees of severity, which we regularly assess for our business operations and our clients. The nature of MJ Hudson’s services means that operations have a relatively small impact on the environment, and we consider both physical and transitional climate-related risks to be low. 

We use metrics to track and assess our performance for both climate-related risks and opportunities while assigning targets to advance our progress. For climate-related risks, we report on metrics that include carbon footprint, carbon intensity and carbon exposure. For climate-related opportunities, we report on metrics such as % of renewable electricity procured, and % of ESG services revenue of total revenue. 

PRI – Reporting and signatory

We see our membership of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment ("PRI") as a natural commitment to support and promote industry best practices, in a world with ever increasing-sustainability challenges, and rapidly developing regulatory requirements. Through the acquisition of the ESG business from Spring Associates in 2019, our dedicated ESG services were covered as a PRI signatory and the wider MJ Hudson group became a signatory in April 2021.  Prior to our membership, we contribute to the following PRI publications: Incorporating Responsible Investment Requirements into Private Equity Fund Terms; and A GP’s Guide to Integrating ESG Factors in Private Equity and going forward, we will seek opportunities to contribute to publications and events related to leading best-practice.   

The Group submitted its first PRI reporting this year, which articulates how we support clients to establish their ESG frameworks and integration practices; develop stewardship strategies; and enhance their monitoring and disclosure. We see this as an important step in progressing practices across the industry and will continue to disclose and align ourselves with PRI’s reporting framework. 

ESG policy

At the start of the financial year, the Board approved the Group’s ESG policy. It sets out the Group’s commitments to corporate sustainability and the integration environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and sound corporate governance into our decision-making processes. The policy will be reviewed on an annual basis, with a view to strengthening its impact.

Carbon neutrality

MJ Hudson is committed to becoming a Carbon Neutral organisation from June 2022 . This compounds our desire to remain environmentally conscious and minimise the impact of our operations. Integral to this strategy is the transition of all our offices to renewable sources of energy to power daily operations. Residual emissions from operations that are not abated at source, and those arising from business travel (by air) will be offset through certified high-quality sequestration projects.

Renewable energy procurement

The Group continues to increase its share of renewable energy to power its operations. As of the start of 2021, MJ Hudson’s London office procures 100% renewable electricity, certified by OFGEM. It adds to the portfolio of offices that utilise renewable sources of electricity including operations in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and MJ Hudson Quantitative Solutions, based in Guernsey. Following the transition of the London office to a new state-of-the-art and energy-efficient building, both the Amsterdam and Dublin-based operations will be moving to new offices with improved sustainability credentials, in 2022. 

Transport and waste

The use of public transport, car-pooling and sustainable transport schemes (e.g. cycle to work) are encouraged.  The Group’s offices implement recycling and waste strategies to minimise the environmental impact of day-to-day operations. Such strategies include the removal of plastic containing beverage supplies, the removal of general waste collection aiming to encourage greater waste sorting and recycling, and migration to efficient printing processes.