Update of Faire Fonds online consumer portal gets covered by Financial Times

Just after updating the online consumer portal Faire Fonds, which analyses controversial investments of 2,163 retail funds, British daily Financial Times reports about findings of the research by German NGOs urgewald and Facing Finance. [1] More than 40% of ESG funds invest in defence companies, and less than 10% of German ESG retail funds are free from any controversial investments.

The article is prominently set at ETF Hub and ESG investing sections of the Financial Times website as the Faire Fonds portal analyses environmental, social and governance retail funds and exchange traded funds on the German market. The research finds that ESG screened ETFs run by DWS and Blackrock have the highest concentration of controversial investments, with DWS’ Xtrackers MSCI Europe Energy ESG Screened ETF 1C amounting to 88.97% of the total volume invested in controversial assets.

The updated portal now lists 1,133 companies based on climate change, environmental destruction, labour rights, human rights, defence, corruption, financial offences and other criteria. The analysis finds that more than 40% of analysed ESG funds and about 70% of ETFs invest in arms manufacturers. Thomas Küchenmeister criticizes that despite the war in Ukraine defence industries had never, under no scenario, place in a sustainable investment portfolio – it is something that the majority of customers oppose.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/372c9402-4702-4a45-940e-02d60f7d79d6