TOPICS
JIC CEO Yokoo holds
meeting with
PRI CEO Atkin
JIC CEO Keisuke Yokoo held meeting with David Atkin, CEO of Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)* on March 19.
JIC became a signatory to the PRI in October 2023. In the meeting, Yokoo and Atkin shared the value that continuing to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) as an opportunity was important as ESG promotion has been globally spread and businesses and funds have been toward addressing ESG issues. They also agreed that despite the anti-ESG movement mainly in the United States, the trend toward promoting ESG with “sustainable” as the core concept will not change based on the fact that there has been no significant change in the business flow of risk capital relating to climate change and other factors and from the perspective of fiduciary responsibility in ESG investment.
JIC is committed to promoting ESG investment within Japan's private equity industry, including current and potential portfolio funds as part of its mission of contributing to strengthening Japan's industrial competitiveness and building and enhancing risk capital ecosystem. Atkin explained that PRI has continued to provide responsible investment policy, due diligence questionnaire (DDQ) guidelines, and ESG investment best practices for signatory PEs and VCs that have limited resources for ESG investment activities.
Yokoo and Atkin also discussed on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), which JIC is addressing as part of its ESG promotion activities. Viewing DE&I as a management issue, they exchanged opinions on creating and sharing role models to have people change their mindset, efforts and system reform to transphorm corporate culture and such. They also discussed on their experiences as CEO. Atkin explained how he could achieve a 45 percent of female managers in an Australian pension fund, while Yokoo described how he realized that experiences as minority would be helpful in promoting DE&I based on his experience that he alone gave a presentation to 200 female manager candidates. They also shared the understanding of significance of promoting diversity in the Japanese startup ecosystem, including increasing the ratio of women among entrepreneurs and capitalists, considering the positive effects of DE&I promotion that have become apparent in Japan and overseas—such as the growth of startups and VCs with a high ratio of women and the revitalization of organizations in companies with a greater number of women in management position.
JIC gained PRI’s endorsement of its perspective on issues related to ESG and DE&I and on JIC’s purpose, direction and specific initiatives in these fields and JIC and PRI reaffirmed mutual commitment to further collaboration in the future.
* The PRI works with its international network of signatories to put the six Principles for Responsible Investment into practice. Its goals are to understand the investment implications of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and to support signatories in integrating these issues into investment and ownership decisions.
