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Winner of the Third Award (2003)
For Tessa Tennant, sustainability is much more than a catchphrase. The winner of the Third SAM/SPG Sustainability Leadership Award co-founded the first sustainability fund in the UK – and one of the first in Europe as well – back in 1988. The Jupiter Ecology Fund, originally launched in 1988 as the Merlin Ecology Fund, now has assets of around CHF 250m under management. After her groundbreaking work with the Jupiter Fund, Tessa Tennant switched to the UK financial services group NPI where her team built SRI assets from CHF22m to over CHF1bn before the company’s assets were merged with Henderson Global Investors. Since 1997, Tessa Tennant has specialised in the Asian markets. She initiated the research of Asian companies for SRI portfolios and just a year later, in 1998, she set up the world’s first sustainability fund for the Asian region. In 2001 she set up Asia’s first SRI organisation, the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia (ASrIA), based in Hong Kong. This is a non-profit organisation committed to developing and promoting corporate social responsibility and sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) in Asia. One of the goals of ASrIA is to encourage the key players in Asia’s financial centres to learn how to integrate sustainability criteria in their investment decisions. ASrIA has over 100 members, including many financial institutions with total assets under management of some USD 2 trillion. Apart from her specialist interest in Asian markets, Tessa Tenannt
continues to perform various roles in numerous organisations. She sits
on the Board of Directors of Calvert World Values Fund, Washington DC
and of Solar Century Co Ltd in the UK. She is an advisor to the UNEP
Finance Initiative. In 2000 Tessa Tennant co-founded and was first Chair
for the Carbon Disclosure Project, the world’s largest institutional
investor initiative on any environmental issue. She also co-founded
and chaired the UK Social Investment Forum from 1993 to 1997. In addition,
she has served on environmental advisory committees for the British
government and The Prince of Wales.
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