Engagement on Corporate responsibility
The Guilé Funds are part of a new generation of shareholder responsibility which bases its activism, beyond exercising voting rights, on continuous and sustained dialogue (engagement) with the companies in the portfolio.
The Guilé Funds Engagement
The engagement of our funds is aligned with the mission of the Global Compact which promotes the mainstreaming of universal values into business strategies and daily operations. It is generally agreed that companies that act responsibly are better equipped to:
The Guilé Engagement Methodology
The Guilé Funds engagement methodology is very particular because:
- it was developed and tested by the Fondation Guilé for two years in New York in collaboration with the Global Compact Office;
- it is embraced by a non-profit organization – the Fondation Guilé;
- it is focused exclusively on the public disclosure of the companies and not proprietary questionnaires, earning it the nickname the "external view" by some major companies;
- it pursues the objective of fostering continuous improvement by analyzing the progress made each year by the companies invested in the Guilé Funds with regard to the Global Compact's ten sustainability principles and sustaining dialogue on potential further improvements.
The Guilé engagement team fosters dialogue with the companies in the portfolio, whether to help them using its analytical methodology to advance their adherence and transparency with regard to the ten principles of the Global Compact, or to urge them to sign this unique, global initiative if they have not yet done so, using a modified methodology to analyze their current reporting practices and compatibility with the Global Compact principles.
Furthermore, the Guilé Funds exercise their investors' voting rights during the year according to the Guilé responsible approach on the basis of Ethos data for Switzerland and analyses by the various national members of the ECGS (European Corporate Governance Service) consultant network for Europe. This procedure for exercising voting rights is also in place for the Guilé Emerging Markets Engagement Fund, still according to the approach of the funds, but this time on the basis of RiskMetrics data.
The exercise of Guilé Fund investor voting rights is an important duty that responds to many of the governance points raised in the General Shareholders' Meetings and thereby supplements the responsible approach of the Guilé Funds.
The Impact of Guilé Engagement
Since the Guilé Funds were created, some one hundred analyses have been communicated to the companies concerned. Guilé Funds investors are informed in detail of the funds' engagement activities, including through an Annual Activity Report that provides a specific record of the ongoing dialogue with each company.
Investors who are interested may receive more specific information upon request regarding the ongoing dialogue and analyses. Contact : Doris Rochat - rochat@ppt.ch
Fondation Guilé Initiatives for a Sustainable Development
Beyond the dialogue with companies regarding their progress in adhering to the ten Global Compact principles, the Fondation Guilé aims to promote responsible entrepreneurship by bringing together various stakeholders in order to launch sustainable growth initiatives.
The objective of this initiative was to assist small-scale farmers in Kenya in managing the risk of adverse weather by developing and offering them micro-insurance products for agriculture.
Since April 2009, close to 200 farmers of the Nanyuki region (250 km north of Nairobi) have been able to insure their corn seeding operations against the effects of drought. This was the first time that farmers who own less than one acre of land could have access to insurance. The Fondation Guilé participated in this pilot project, launched by the Syngenta Foundation, UAP Assurance, the Swisscontact Foundation and Kenya's Meteorological Department. It is continued through the development of other phases of this micro-insurance product, particularly for the long rainy season in spring.