Kairos ActivESG

Founded in 1999, Kairos is an independent and alternative global asset manager with c. 140 employees and manages $5.7bn. The Kairos ActivESG fund launched in November 2019 and is managed by Riccardo Valeri who has a background in European market neutral investing and has been at Kairos since 2015. The strategy targets a high single digit return but with a lower volatility than the STOXX Europe 600ESG-X net return. The strategy is bottom-up in nature and takes a fundamental approach to stock valuation, though the process is also macro aware as well as having a number of themes running through the book. For example, the portfolio is currently built around four core ESG investment themes; energy transition, digitalization, demographics and "others". Whilst ESG themes are central to the portfolio, the initial screening of European mid and large caps contains numerous ESG filters, based on sector exclusions, business operations controversy risk exclusion and an ESG risk rating framework. Regular macro analysis is undertaken to see if bottom-up ideas are in line with the teams macro base case scenario, with macro analysis covering the interest rate environment, the stage of the economic cycle and factor analysis. The portfolio typically consists of 80 ideas (50 long and 30 short), with a 50/50 split between best in class ESG stocks and improvers. The net typically falls between 40-80% with the gross 100-160%.