SRI supporters celebrated a landmark last month when an SRI fund became the UK’s top-performing unit trust for the first time.
Of the 324 unit trusts in the UK All Companies sector, the Co-operative
Insurance Sustainable Leaders Trust was the best performer for the year
to 31 January 2007, providing a return of 29.3 per cent, more than
double the 13.3 per cent achieved by the UK All Companies sector as a
whole.
Mike Fox, fund manager for the CIS Sustainable Leaders Trust, said he
hoped the news might convince sceptics that SRI funds ‘deserve to be
taken seriously by all investors and not just those with ethical
requirements’. The fund has a portfolio with a value of £155million
($302m), 93 per cent of which is invested in UK equities.
CIS said the outperformance over the year was ‘driven by a number of
large holdings within the support services sector’, among them
the FTSE Small Cap company Connaught, which provides repair and
maintenance services to social housing. It also benefited from having
no exposure to oil and gas companies, which have suffered due to
declining oil prices.
