Zurich / Basel, 16 October 2019 – UBS Group CEO Sergio P. Ermotti is honored to join the newly-formed CEO Alliance on Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD), following an invitation by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The Alliance comprises 30 CEOs from across the globe and is aimed at harnessing the insights of private sector leaders on ways to unblock impediments and implement solutions for scaling long-term investment into sustainable development, in line with the SDGs.
The cost to achieve the SDGs is estimated at trillions of dollars per year. Even if public funding is maximized there will still be a significant shortfall, making financing from the private sector critical.
The Alliance aims to use its expertise, influence and business acumen to devise ways to stimulate long-term investment in sustainable development and speed up progress towards achieving the SDGs.
Over the next two years the group will focus on
- delivering solutions to unlock long-term finance and investment in sustainable development both at company and system-wide levels;
- mobilizing additional resources for the countries and sectors most in need;
- finding ways to increase the positive impact of business activities; and
- aligning business practices with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
UBS Group CEO, Sergio P. Ermotti said, "I'm very pleased about this invitation which is a testament to our efforts to create long-term positive value for clients, employees, investors, and society. We see a strong business rationale for catering to the growing importance of, and demand for, sustainability."
UBS has bold ambitions to drive change that matters. By the end of 2021, UBS has committed to raise USD 5 billion of SDG-related impact investments, which aim to create a measurable positive social or environmental impact as well as a compelling return for our clients. As the world's leading global wealth manager, UBS launched the first 100% sustainable multi-asset portfolio for private clients, which includes innovative SDG-related impact investments in equities and bonds. The portfolio recently surpassed USD 7 billion in invested assets. In another example, UBS's Climate Aware strategy, with over USD 2 billion in assets under management (as at the end of June 2019), is underpinned by our Asset Management division's active corporate engagement program that is helping to drive positive change toward a low-carbon economy.
UBS was also a founding signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB), launched in September 2019. Under the UN PRB, leading banks around the world, holding a collective USD 47 trillion in assets and representing one third of the global banking sector, have pledged to align strategically with, and scale up, their contribution to the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
See here
for further information on our contribution to the SDGs.
UBS Group AG and UBS AG
