Apple, Facebook and Amazon Part of New Sustainability Fund

A host of major tech companies like Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN) are part of a new investment fund managed by UBS, that brings sustainability investing to life. ‘A lot of the sustainable investments out there – especially for every day investors – have been what’s called a negative screen,’ said Andrei Cherny, co-founder and CEO of Aspiration, an investment firm which launched the aforementioned fund, called Redwood Investment Fund (REDWX). ‘You strip out oil, tobacco or firearms – things you don’t want in the fund, but often pay for that with returns.’ He said that when you look at companies’ internal practices around how they treat their employees and deal with the environmental issues they’re confronting – those decisions can actually yield to more profits. ‘What we do is look at non-financial information,’ said Dinah Koehler, a director and equity specialist for sustainable investors at UBS. ‘Information on companies’ environmental performance, social issues, labor standards and governance such as board structure and board diversity. The idea is to leverage this information in a very structured and systematic way across all industries and in so doing, we have found that it drives the value of the fund and leads to higher performance.’ TheStreet’s Scott Gamm has details from New York.