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Newsmakers

Australian Superfund Seeks Zero Emissions for Real Estate

Cbus sets goal to eliminate emissions from its A$5 billion property portfolio by 2030.

By Michael Katz

Cbus, an A$48 billion ($34.3 billion) Australian building and construction industry superfund, has set a goal to reduce the emissions generated by its property holdings to zero by 2030.

The superfund’s CIO, Kristian Fok, announced the target at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco last week.

Cbus currently holds approximately $A5 billion in real estate through its flagship Cbus Property subsidiary, and property fund managers, including ISPT and AMP. The fund said conservative estimates suggest the size of its property holdings could more than double to over $A10 billion by 2030.

“We have crossed the line where our obligation has become a commercial imperative,” said Fok. “What’s more, we can access cheaper finance from lenders who view high-quality building projects as low-risk assets.”

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Fok said designing buildings with new technologies in mind will be essential to reducing emissions over a building’s life.

“This is beyond just installing rooftop solar panels,” Fok added.  “Operable facades that both insulate and produce energy are the future. Buildings must be ready to adapt to these changes. Smart systems for climate control are improving every year and are an exciting area of energy efficiency.”

This past year has seen a sharp rise in the number of companies committing to reduce their emissions, according to the Science Based Targets Initiative, a collaboration among the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and not-for-profit charity CDP.

Between January and August of this year, more than 130 new companies—including Michelin, Kraft Heinz, and AB InBev—have joined the initiative, which independently assesses and validates corporate emissions reduction targets. This is more than a 39% increase compared to the same period in 2017, and 17% of Fortune Global 500 companies have now committed to set science-based targets, the group said.  

“Targets based on science are the only effective way to meet the challenges we face,” Anand Mahindra, CEO of car maker the Mahindra Group, said in a release.

“Around the world, hundreds of businesses are already showing that this is possible with substantial benefits to brand reputation and the bottom line.”

More than 480 global corporations have now committed to set emissions reduction targets in line with climate science and the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to the Science Based Targets Initiative.

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Home > News > Corporate Moves > Pension Protection Fund Founder to Become Clara’s First Chair
Corporate Moves

Pension Protection Fund Founder to Become Clara’s First Chair

Lawrence Churchill will act in a ‘non-executive capacity’ for the start-up DB consolidator.

By Chris Butera

Lawrence Churchill



Lawrence Churchill, the founding chairman of the Pension Protection Fund, will once again become the inaugural chairman of Clara, another UK pension lifeboat.

Churchill, who also chairs the Pensions Policy Institute and Prudential’s independent governance committee, will act in a “non-executive capacity,” according to Clara. He will join Alan Pickering, who was recently named chairman of its trustee board, Michael Chatterton, and Frank Oldham.

Clara is a defined benefit consolidation vehicle, which takes floundering pensions and pools their assets together to create a larger fund in hopes of shoring up all of them. This helps reduce costs and improves governance. It also can provide more investment options since the consolidated plan now has more capital.

Clara is looking to launch in the coming months, where it will announce its first deal.

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Churchill said the new move was a “significant opportunity” for him, and that he was “looking forward to helping pioneer” the pension consolidation movement. While pension consolidations are still in their early days, Churchill hopes they will become the “route of choice” for companies looking to provide more security for the retirements of their beneficiaries.

Churchill also previously chaired NEST from 2010 to 2015 and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme from 2012 to this year. In his 40-plus years of financial service experience, 30 of them have been on boards.

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