Financial services information publishing company Rainmaker Group today announced the acquisition of sustainable investment specialist publications The Sustainability Report and Audacious Investing.
Effective 1 October, Rachel Alembakis, founder of The Sustainability Report and Audacious Investing, will join Rainmaker Group as editor of the two titles. She will report to Alex Dunnin, executive director of research, and Michelle Baltazar, executive director of media.
"Responsible investment and taking into account environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) factors is now a mainstream investment issue for all fund trustee boards, their fiduciaries and the capital markets," said Christopher Page, Rainmaker managing director.
Illustrating this, almost two thirds of Australia's investment and superannuation market being around $2 trillion is managed by fund trustee boards and investment managers that are signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI). Australia has the fourth highest number of global signatories to these protocols according to the UN PRI.
While many super funds follow ESG principles across their whole portfolios, there are 220 ESG managed funds and super fund investment options active in the market. Research by Rainmaker has shown that many of these investments match or out-perform their non-ESG counterparts.
"Rainmaker as a high impact industry researcher and media publisher wants to play an active role supporting our stakeholders in this developing field. The Sustainability Report is a highly regarded specialist ESG publication and it is very exciting for Rainmaker to be partnering with them," added Page.
Following the purchase, The Sustainability Report will become Rainmaker's key B2B title in the ESG investment and corporate sustainability space in Australia, while Audacious Investing will become a key B2C title in responsible/ethical investing for consumers.
"I am delighted to be joining the team at Rainmaker Information and look forward to growing and extending content and research in the ESG space in Australia," Alembakis said. "I am looking forward to working with the passionate and knowledgeable team at Rainmaker to further grow this critical space in the business and investment world."
Rainmaker currently publishes five B2B titles, including its flagship newspaper, Financial Standard, the key consumer title Money magazine, and three B2C titles: The Good Super Guide, The Good Investment Guide and The Good Economics Guide.
Established in 2011, The Sustainability Report is a weekly digital publication that provides unique, in-depth writing covering how investible Australian companies manage disclose and communicate their ESG risks and opportunities, and how Australian institutional asset owners and asset managers are using ESG risk/reward analysis to mitigate risk and provide sources of long-term investment return. Audacious Investing was launched in 2018 to cover the burgeoning consumer demand for sustainable, ethical and responsible investment financial products.
The sale was completed for an undisclosed sum of money.
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