By Dr. Marcel BARTNIK, Partner and Sebastian DITTRICH, Legal Trainee, Vandenbulke*
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name”, or so Confucius is supposed to have said. The European regulator ESMA acted on this philosophy and, after a lengthy consultation period, recently published its guidelines on names of funds that use ESG or sustainability-related terms.
The first justification of yet another set of rules applying to the world of sustainable finance is the prevention of greenwashing, i.e. promising more in the name than actually is in the content (or portfolio in this case). Another reason is avoiding a fragmented set of national rules on this topic...
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