A Letter of Introduction From The Portfolio Managers

 

At Brown Advisory, we are deeply committed to sustainable investing, with the goal of helping clients generate attractive investment returns, align their investments with their values and make a positive impact on society with their capital. Our firm managed more than $6 billion* in client assets under various sustainable investment mandates for individuals, families and institutions, as of Dec. 31, 2019.

Our goal with this work is to help our clients generate attractive investment returns driven by innovative ESG research, align their investments with their values and make a positive impact on society with their capital.

For a number of our sustainable investment strategies, we issue formal reports each year to keep clients informed about how those strategies are generating positive impact. Enclosed is our 2019 Impact Report for the Sustainable Core Fixed Income strategy. We seek to deliver attractive, risk-adjusted returns by incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) research that strengthens our bottom-up, credit-focused research while building a portfolio that aims to produce positive environmental and social impact.

This report includes a review of how we invest using innovative ESG and sustainability research, how we look for and identify impact across various fixed income sectors, and how the investments in our portfolio are creating positive environmental and social outcomes. We also discuss how we engage with issuers— sometimes for research and advocacy purposes, and other times in an advisory capacity with issuers seeking guidance on structuring their labeled bond offerings— as well as how we participate in the broader sustainable investing community.

We are pleased to report continued progress and advancement of our firm’s sustainable investing platform in 2019. We expanded our ESG research team to five full-time analysts with the addition of Lisa Fillingame Abraham and Victoria Avara. As always, we thank our fundamental and ESG research teams, who work tirelessly to ensure that our investment decisions are informed by solid ESG data and clear viewpoints about how that data may affect a company’s prospects. Additionally, we thank all of our colleagues across the firm for embracing sustainable investing principles so enthusiastically, and most importantly our clients for entrusting us with their capital.

We hope you find this report informative, and we welcome a continuing conversation with you about the work we are doing.

Sincerely,

 

Tom Graff, CFA
Portfolio Manager
 

Amy Hauter, CFA
Portfolio Manager

 

 

 

 

*Brown Advisory entities included are: Brown Advisory LLC, Brown Investment Advisory & Trust Company, Brown Advisory Ltd. and Brown Advisory Trust Company of Delaware, LLC.