The LLB Österreich investment office has engaged in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing since 2010. As part of our investment process, we can offer the following ESG methods: exclusion criteria, best-in-class approach, and portfolios with an optimised carbon footprint. Depending on individual needs, investors can select or combine a suitable ESG method and implement it in their own investment process.

Exclusion criteria: Here, controversial services and products are defined that companies, sectors, or countries may not engage in if they want to remain in the ESG investment universe. Criteria may be defined according to international standards (OECD, UN, ILO) or the investor's own canon of values. Within this framework, controversial services, manufacturing processes, or products can be indexed and excluded. These include animal experiments and industrial agriculture, for example. Arms production and trading, the nuclear industry, or the extraction of fossil fuels and raw materials as well as child labour, production conditions, and ecological product qualities are also generally among the exclusion criteria.

Portfolios with defined CO₂ targets: A sustainable investment strategy can also be implemented and expanded by taking the carbon footprint into account. The sum of the total CO₂ emissions of the individual securities in a portfolio is regularly monitored. Depending on investors' wishes, this total carbon balance can be kept below a threshold value by restructuring the portfolio.

A sustainable investment strategy takes into account selected ESG factors in addition to financial criteria: This adds further aspects to the analysis which may go beyond traditional financial indicators. Company-specific opportunities and risks are also evaluated and examined, which often cannot be determined on the basis of fundamental data. Furthermore, the occurrence of a sustainability risk can have a negative impact on the value of an investment and thus also on the return of the financial products.