Overview of the quarter

For example, the use of checklists – as championed by Atul Gawande in his book The Checklist Manifesto – has dramatically reduced risk and improved safety records in fields ranging from aviation to surgery.

At Ruffer, our main objective is to preserve clients’ capital, and then to grow it over time. One of the many risks to capital preservation is from climate change. Our Responsible Investment team uses a checklist to aid our understanding of – and engagement on – companies’ energy transition plans.

This list requires us to check three main areas. Are the targets ambitious enough? Is the plan credible? And can it help create value for shareholders?

In this report, we shine a spotlight on our recent engagements with BP and Ryanair and show how our approach to energy transition plans works in practice to help identify sources of both risk and opportunity – whilst encouraging companies’ efforts to reduce their carbon emissions.

Our other engagements in focus in this report include another energy company, ExxonMobil. Among several other topics, we also pressed the company on whether its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions targets were sufficiently stretching, given its success so far. The company replied that it would be more appropriate to reassess these targets once it had integrated a couple of acquisitions. In addition, we engaged with multinational metals and mining company Glencore, holding a discussion on a wide range of themes, including its mining operations in Peru and Colombia.