Richard Mattison

MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI), a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, has appointed Dr. Richard Mattison as Head of ESG and Climate, effective October 29.

In this role, Mattison will lead the firm’s ESG and Climate product development and business strategy. He will work closely with leaders across MSCI, including Chairman and CEO Henry Fernandez and President Baer Pettit, to drive innovation and scale throughout the ESG and Climate product franchise and build integrated solutions that empower investors to remain at the forefront of sustainable investing. Mattison is based in London and will report to Alvise Munari, Chief Product Officer. 

Mattison has over 20 years of experience in sustainable finance and previously served as President of S&P Global’s sustainability unit. Mattison was also Chief Executive Officer of Trucost Plc, a company that pioneered climate analytics, which was sold to S&P Global in 2016. Throughout the course of his career, he has advised various financial institutions, companies and governments on how to integrate sustainability and climate change analysis into their decision making. Mattison was a member of the EU’s High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and a member of the People’s Bank of China’s Green Finance Taskforce, both of which were instrumental in guiding policy in those jurisdictions. He is currently a Senior Advisor to the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

“I am delighted to join MSCI at such a critical inflection point,” said Dr. Richard Mattison. “Sustainability and climate change issues are reshaping the global investment landscape. MSCI is a leader in delivering high quality data and ratings, advanced analytics and client-led solutions to the world’s largest asset managers, asset owners and banks. I am looking forward to leading the next generation of innovation to deliver enhanced solutions and insights to clients.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Richard to MSCI as the leader of our ESG and Climate business,” said Alvise Munari. “Richard’s experience in sustainable finance, coupled with his proven track record in delivering innovative solutions, uniquely positions him to deliver on our commitment to helping investors meet their sustainability and climate goals. His leadership will not only drive our initiatives forward but also inspire new strategies that align with the evolving sustainable investment landscape.”

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Shane Edwards

MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI), a leading provider of mission-critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, announced that Shane Edwards, MSCI’s current Head of Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) Client Coverage, has been appointed to the role of Head of APAC Client Coverage, effective today. Mr. Edwards will report directly to Axel Kilian, Chief Client Officer.

In this role, Mr. Edwards will assume the responsibility of overseeing MSCI’s sales and client relationship management in APAC, and delivering a cohesive, solutions-driven client strategy as Kazuya Nagasawa, current Head of APAC Client Coverage, leaves the firm to pursue new opportunities.

“Shane’s strategic vision and his focus on collaboration and client centricity have made a tremendous impact on MSCI’s ANZ business in a short period of time. I am excited to have Shane drive the next chapter of business growth for our APAC franchise,” said Axel Kilian, Chief Client Officer. “I would also like to thank Kazu for his tremendous contribution to MSCI in the past 12 years. His leadership has strengthened our Japan and Asia Pacific market presence and competitive edge, and helped build a solid foundation for continued growth.”

Before he joined MSCI in February 2024, Mr. Edwards was Global Head of Equity Derivatives at UBS, where he was responsible for sales, trading and structuring functions across all product areas. He brought to the role 25 years of experience in finance, having also worked at RBS/ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank and Macquarie Bank.

Mr. Edwards will have interim responsibility as the Head of ANZ Client Coverage, and will continue to be based in Sydney, Australia.

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Shane Edwards has been appointed to the role of Managing Director and Head of Australia and New Zealand Client Coverage, effective February 19, 2024. Based in Sydney, Shane will be responsible for driving MSCI’s commercial activities in Australia and New Zealand markets, managing client relationships and delivering a cohesive, solutions-driven strategy for clients both within Australia and New Zealand and across the APAC region. He will report to Kazuya Nagasawa, Head of APAC Client Coverage.

Shane brings to the role over two decades of experience in running large global sales and structuring teams in the investment industry. He previously held a variety of leadership roles at UBS, including the Managing Director and Global Head of Equity Derivatives where he led the sales of complex products across all asset classes to a broad client spectrum. Prior to this, Shane was the Global Head of Structured Sales, Custom Index and Hybrid Trading at the Royal Bank of Scotland, devising innovative solutions for clients globally. He holds a first class honours degree in finance from Macquarie University.

Kazuya Nagasawa, Head of APAC Client Coverage, commented: “Shane’s vast experience across extensive client segments and products, and his deep knowledge in financial markets will add tremendous value to MSCI’s growth in Australia and New Zealand. I am confident that his leadership will prove critical to advancing MSCI’s mission of delivering services and solutions that address the evolving needs of our established and growing client base in the region.”

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Gillian Mollod

Following several months of consultation, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) has published its inaugural risk management and disclosure framework which is designed to create a global standard for corporate reporting of biodiversity and nature-related risks.

The initiative was founded in 2020 with the goal of supporting a shift in global financial flows toward nature-positive outcomes and away from activities which may harm ecosystems. Currently, consistent data on nature and biodiversity is scarce, which affects models that depend on it.

The TNFD framework aims to guide companies and investors in assessing and publishing their nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities. More broadly, the framework aims to standardize nature-related disclosure and raise awareness among investors and other capital-markets participants of the economic significance of nature and the risks that its degradation and loss holds for society.

Here are five things for companies and investors to know.

1. Voluntary… for now

Though the TNFD establishes a voluntary reporting framework, it could quickly become a market standard, much like the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) became the global baseline for corporate climate disclosure. By design, the TNFD takes its approach from the TCFD. Both initiatives are designed to harness risk management and disclosure to help channel capital toward sustainable outcomes.

2. Four pillars and 14 core global indicators

The TNFD framework extends the TCFD’s four pillars — governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets — to nature. The TNFD includes a core set of 14 indicators for reporting across sectors together with recommendations for sector-specific reporting. The framework also recommends a set of additional disclosure metrics which organizations can use where deemed relevant. Businesses and investors who want to be TNFD-aligned would, at minimum, report data for the core disclosure metrics.

3. Location, location, location

The TNFD has developed a structured process for reporting and management of nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities called LEAP: Locate your interface with nature; Evaluate your dependence and impacts; Assess your risks and opportunities; and Prepare to respond to those risk and opportunities and to report. The “L” emphasizes the critical importance of location-specific data. In contrast to climate change, where carbon emissions have a global impact, impacts on nature and biodiversity generally vary depending on whether company operations are located, for example, in a city, a coastal zone or a tropical rainforest. MSCI supports investors, banks and other capital-markets participants with data and tools designed to help them integrating location-specific risks into their investment decisions.

4. Mind the gaps

Complexity, a lack of transparency in supply chains and limitations on data can make reporting impacts and risks on nature a challenge. For investors and financial institutions, collecting data on corporate supply chains or pinpointing specific impacts by location could continue to present significant hurdles. The TNFD framework aims to provide guidance how to reduce those gaps in the future.

5. Technology is helping

Despite the data challenges, technological advancements and the use of various tools such as satellite imagery, remote sensing, blockchain, bioacoustics or “eDNA” are helping investors and other capital-markets participants address nature and biodiversity loss.  MSCI is working with expert partners to make use of such new technologies to help investors with advanced tools and data.

Though challenges remain, the TNFD adds impetus to the standardization of nature-related financial reporting. The inaugural framework offers companies, investors and financial institutions a new global baseline for measuring and reporting biodiversity-related risks, dependencies and impacts.

By Arne Klug, Gillian Mollod, Sylvain Vanston – MSCI ESG & Climate Research

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Nearly half (44%) of listed companies have now set decarbonisation targets, which is 8 percentage points more than was reported in the October 2022 MSCI Net-Zero Tracker^[3], but this does not necessarily mean that they are all adequately addressing their carbon intensity. Only 17% of companies’ climate targets would align carbon emissions across their total value chain with the ambitious 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.

Further showing the range of commitments being made, fewer than a third (30%) of all published targets are aiming to reach net-zero emissions, despite the likelihood of voluntary and mandatory corporate climate disclosure standards coming into effect in the near future. 

The Net-Zero Tracker, released by MSCI, a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, shows that public companies are projected to deplete their share of the global emissions budget for limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C by October 2026, two months sooner than MSCI previously estimated in October 2022. 

Public companies are on track to emit 11.2 gigatons of direct Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere this year, unchanged from 2022, despite making more carbon reduction commitments². This puts them on a path to warm the planet by 2.7°C this century, according to MSCI’s “Implied Temperature Rise” metric, based upon an analysis of their future emissions pathways and current climate commitments.

For investors trying to assess these companies to make climate-conscious portfolio decisions, there has been an upturn in the level of disclosures, as over a third (35%) of public companies now report Scope 3 emissions that arise from their suppliers or use of their products by customers, up five percentage points from October last year.

Private assets exhibit lower carbon intensity

Though it is often considered that carbon intensities may be higher in private markets than in their public counterparts, MSCI’s estimates suggest otherwise. Private companies in four of the five most emissions-intensive industry groups are estimated to produce less carbon than their publicly listed equivalents, according to data from MSCI ESG Research and Burgiss^[4].

Within the top five industry groups (utilities, materials, energy, transportation, and food, beverage & tobacco), the average estimated carbon intensity for listed companies is 76% higher that of unlisted companies.

This contributes to institutional investors financing almost 150 million tons of CO2 emissions from the private companies in their private equity, debt and real asset portfolios^[5].

Emissions attributes of private investments are driven by sectoral trends – with privately held companies being more likely to be in sub-industries that are less emissions intensive. For example, the information technology and health care sectors together account for 47% of the aggregate market value of institutional private holdings, but constitute just 6% of emissions. In contrast, the energy, materials, and utilities sectors represent only 6% of the total private market value and produce nearly half of estimated financed emissions.

Sylvain Vanston, Executive Director, Climate Change Investment Research, MSCI, comments:“The recent IPCC AR6 Synthesis report is clear. Climate change is here, measurably, as predicted, and the risk of complete ruin is now very real. We are seeing greater progress from public companies towards achieving essential climate goals, but the MSCI Net-Zero Tracker reveals that a significant gap remains between their climate commitments and their carbon emissions.

“The equation for investors is that they must address transition risks today or face severe and irreversible physical risks tomorrow, and that they have a role to play in driving the existential change required. Investors can use their strategic levers, including asset allocation, green investments, and engagement with boards and policymakers, to help not just put companies on a net-zero path, but also encourage the regulatory changes needed to level the business playing field between.

“Public and private companies and investors must act urgently, as this report clearly shows that time is running out and we are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C.”

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Notes:
[1] https://www.msci.com/documents/1296102/38217127/NetZero-Tracker-May.pdf
[2] As of March 31, 2023.
[3] https://www.msci.com/documents/1296102/26195050/MSCI-Net-ZeroTracker-October.pdf/e8d27269-56d0-cc92-2cf7-c98e8da601ad?t=1667223795610
[4] https://www.burgiss.com/carbon-footprinting-of-private-equity-and-debt-funds-analytics Gigaton is equal to a billion tons. Based on an analysis of data from MSCI ESG Research and Burgiss, as of Sept. 30, 2022. Burgiss is a global provider of data and research for alternative investments.
[5] This estimate of private-asset emissions does not include the complete carbon footprint of all unlisted assets, whose ownership extends beyond institutional investors to other public and private companies as well as to governments. The world’s listed companies are on track to emit 11.2 billion tons of direct (Scope 1) carbon emissions this year.

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