The EU’s Sustainable Finance Action Plan – What Does it Mean for Fund Managers?

Sustainable finance, and more broadly, ESG and responsible investing, are becoming increasingly important for investors and for fund managers. They have also increasingly become the focus of regulators around the globe, with many countries introducing regulator requirements in this area, often to complement voluntary codes of best practice. For fund managers seeking to navigate a path through a myriad of consultations, calls for evidence, regulatory proposals, and impact analyses, the resulting complexity can be both time consuming and overwhelming. Here we focus on one piece of the regulatory jigsaw – the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan – where some clarity as to the future direction of travel is emerging to assess, as this EU Parliament draws to a close, the progress that has been made in an area seen as integral to sustainable growth across the EU.