Meridian Capital — Annual Report · 2025 11 / 15
Responsible Investing
Investment risk, not marketing
Responsible investing did not begin at Meridian Capital as a product idea. It began as a risk question: which balance sheets, business models and boards will not survive the transition to a low-carbon economy? We treat a company’s climate exposure, the quality of its governance and its social licence the way we treat leverage or currency risk — as material inputs to valuation, priced before we invest and monitored for as long as we hold the position.
The work is done in-house. Our proprietary ESG scores cover 2,400 issuers and are built by the same analysts who make the buy and sell recommendations, not by a separate department whose conclusions can be filed away. Exclusions are deliberately few and firm: thermal coal since 2019, controversial weapons without exception. Everything else is a matter of price, evidence and engagement.
At the end of 2025, 76% of the CHF 52.4 billion we manage sat in strategies classified under SFDR Article 8 or 9 — up from 48% in 2021, without a single fund being relabelled to get there.
Share of ESG-integrated assets
Assets in SFDR Article 8 and 9 strategies as a percentage of assets under management, 2021–2025.
Responsible investing in numbers
Financing the transition, not just yesterday’s winners
In May 2025 we launched our climate-transition strategy — the firm’s first new strategy in four years, and the fastest to reach scale: CHF 420 million raised by year end. It deliberately avoids the crowded bet on yesterday’s winners and holds two kinds of companies: enablers, whose products make decarbonisation possible — grid equipment, rail technology, building efficiency, industrial electrification — and improvers, high-emission businesses with credible, board-owned transition plans that the market still prices as laggards.
Every holding must pass the same valuation discipline as any other Meridian Capital portfolio, and every improver is on a defined engagement timetable. The strategy is one instrument of our portfolio-wide SBTi commitment: net-zero financed emissions by 2040.