PANOS SERETIS | Head of ESG Research - EMEA, MSCI
ZOLTAN NAGY | Executive Director, Equity Core Research, MSCI
RIC MARSHALL | Executive Director, ESG Research team, MSCI

Recent studies by MSCI ESG Research LLC have shown historical positive links between environmental, social, and governance considerations and corporate financial performance. Because investors might still question whether ESG historically added value in emerging markets, where companies’ consideration of ESG risks is a more recent phenomenon, we compared the performance of four ESG indexes to their MSCI emerging-market parent. Overall, we found that despite emerging-market companies’ tending to have lower MSCI ESG Ratings than global peers on average, ESG characteristics measured by MSCI ESG Ratings had contributed to performance overall.