Creating a Lean, Mean and Green Portfolio
Veganizing Your Investments
Thank you all who tuned in for our December 7, 2021 event. A professional guide to cruelty-free investing, hosted by Beyond Investing CEO Claire Smith with appearances by Lee Coates, Head of Ethical Screening on Listed Equities, Tyler Mayoras Venture Capital Partner at Beyond Impact, and Andy Holroyd Head of the Funding Platform Beyond Animal to talk about direct investment and trends.
Meet Claire Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Claire Smith is a vegan entrepreneur and impact investor who splits her time between Ireland and Switzerland. The instigator of the Beyond Investing vegan investment platform and CIO of Beyond Impact, she is developing investment programs for vegans and environmentalists in both public and private markets and directly founding and investing in plant-based, animal replacing, and cruelty-free businesses. She is co-founder of Beyond Animal, an online platform to accelerate the growth of a thriving vegan economy, and President of Beyond Cruelty Foundation, formed to campaign for zero animal exploitation and to fund safe havens for animals.
Previously she was a research analyst, partner and shareholder at leading alternatives advisory firm Albourne Partners. She covered all managers globally undertaking quantitative equity market neutral, statistical arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, and volatility arbitrage strategies, including tail hedging, and some multistrategy relative value. Claire also led a project to upgrade and expand Albourne’s proprietary database on alternatives managers.
Prior to joining Albourne in 2004, Claire provided bespoke hedge fund research to London funds of funds and published well over 100 articles in the financial press. From 1986 to 1998 Claire was employed at various UBS group companies as a derivatives broker, marketer, and structurer. Career highlights include initiating a synthetic warrants issuance program in 1994, becoming head of European convertible sales in 1995, and head of investor derivative marketing in 1996. Claire started her career in 1985 as a credit analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank after completing a Master’s program in Chemical Engineering and Management at Imperial College, London.
Claire founded 100 Women in Hedge Funds in Geneva in 2007 and oversaw the organization’s strategy and development in Switzerland through 2014. She was a member of the London Board of 100 Women in Hedge Funds from 2009 and of the global Advisory Council from 2012. Claire was a member of the Board of AVVEC, a Geneva charity that provides support to women and children subjected to domestic violence from 2013 to 2019.
The US Vegan Climate ETF (Exchange Traded Fund)
(Ticker: VEGN) seeks to track the Beyond Investing US Vegan Climate Index (VEGAN). VEGAN screens large cap US companies for a variety of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) considerations, primarily animal harm and exploitation, as well as fossil fuels, environmental damage, and human rights.
By tracking the index, VEGN seeks to invest in companies that offer:
- A humane approach. VEGN seeks to provide market-capitalization-weighted exposure to US companies that satisfy its rigorous ESG standards, limiting its largest holdings to 5% of the total portfolio.
- Animal-friendly. VEGN aims to exclude from consideration companies that harm animals, screening out companies that are involved in animal testing, animal-derived products, as well as animals in sports or entertainment.
- Good for the environment, good for the people. VEGN screens out companies involved in fossil fuels and their use in energy production and also excludes companies involved in military and defense, as well as human rights abuses.
Through its passive rules-based approach Vegan seeks to avoid investments in companies whose activities directly contribute to animal suffering, destruction of the natural environment, and climate change.
Vegan is independently calculated and published in real time with the ticker Vegan, on Bloomberg and Reuters terminals as well as reported daily on the Solactive website.
The US Vegan Climate ETF is listed on the New York Stock Exhange.
The prospectus explains the index strategy and most importantly the policies developed by Beyond Investing, which are enshrined in the rules governing the index.
These rules seek to address a broad range of activities that hurt animals and to exclude companies engaged in those practices from the index; these include extraction and burning of fossil fuel due to the threat to the environment and wildlife posed by global warming.
Why VEGN ETF?
The VEGN ETF seeks to avoid investing in companies involved in the slaughter, cruelty, and mistreatment of billions of animals each year. We will not invest in any company that is reliant on animal, planet, or human exploitation.
FARM reserves the right to change or modify this event at any time. All participants will be notified of such changes. Each webinar live attendance limited to the first 100 attendees. Recordings of each webinar can be made available upon request following the event.