Amundi has expanded its suite of socially responsible investment products with the introduction of a European equity ETF based on the widely followed Stoxx Europe 600 universe.
The Amundi Stoxx Europe 600 ESG UCITS ETF provides ESG-tailored exposure to the broad developed Europe equity market.
The Amundi Stoxx Europe 600 ESG UCITS ETF has been created by revamping the €170 million Amundi Stoxx Europe 600 UCITS ETF.
The decision to repurpose the fund, rather than create a new ETF, was taken as Amundi recently acquired the massive €4.5 billion Lyxor Core STOXX Europe 600 UCITS ETF through its purchase of fellow French ETF issuer Lyxor.
Methodology
The repurposed fund has switched from tracking the Stoxx Europe 600 Index and is now linked to the STOXX Europe 600 ESG Broad Market Index.
The index’s construction process starts from the Stoxx Europe 600 universe of large, mid, and small-cap stocks from 17 developed market countries in Europe.
The ESG methodology harnesses insights from Sustainalytics to remove violators of international standards as well as companies involved in controversial weapons, military contracting, tobacco, and thermal coal.
The remaining constituents are then ranked by ESG score within each of the 11 ICB industry groups. The top-ranking securities are selected until the number of selected securities reaches 80% of those found in each industry group in the parent universe.
The ETF’s expense ratio remains unchanged at 0.18%. It is now classified as an Article 8 product under the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).
The fund is listed on Xetra (Ticker: C6EGR GY), Euronext Paris (C6E FP), and SIX Swiss Exchange (C6E SW) in euros.
The fund will compete with the SPDR STOXX Europe 600 SRI UCITS ETF (ZPDX GY) which launched in October 2019. This fund tracks the STOXX Europe 600 SRI Index which follows a near-identical approach as described above but targets the top 33% of the top-ranking securities by ESG score within each ICB Industry group. The ETF currently houses €120m in assets and has an expense ratio of 0.12%.