At this year’s DBU Summer Academy in St. Marienthal near Ostritz a study, conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) on behalf of the DBU, was introduced. According to the study, sustainable investments, if they are spread over the whole market spectrum, yielded in the current financial crisis from 2007 to 2009 no worse results in comparison to conventional systems. "Actually, there is no reason to neglect issues of sustainability in the investment.
Especially non-profit organizations can thus also consider charitable objectives in their portfolio while not achieving lower yields", said DBU CFO Michael Dittrich on the presentation of the study. "However, it would be wrong to think of being able to escape with the broad-based sustainability indices the downward trend in the crisis", said Dr. Michael Schröder, Director of the Research Department Capital at the ZEW. Certain advantages were the result of an intensive sustainable selection. The Nature Stock Index (NAI) suffered significantly lower losses and achieves a better performance than the overall market in the crisis.
Franz S. Waas, CEO of the DekaBank, pointed out in the summer academy’s panel discussion that sustainable investments are currently difficult to market. However, in the next ten years sustainability will have a different status among the investors. Mr Waas also stressed that sustainable investments would offer no yield disadvantage today.
