| dc.description.abstract | The consciousness about sustainability and environmental solutions has never been greater
than it is now. Several companies and private investors are taking these issues into account
when choosing where to invest. This study investigates the relationship between sustainability
focus and the financial performance of funds in Scandinavia. We analyse a panel data
consisting of 72 observations from the period 1st of January 2015 to 31st of December 2020
collected from Thomson Reuters Eikon Database. Our sample is composed of 35
sustainable focused funds and 35 matched conventional funds. As benchmark, we use the
MSCI World Index. We conduct the analysis using the Carhart four-factor model, which
allows us to compare the different alpha values for a sustainable portfolio and a conventional
portfolio. The result indicates that the sustainability focus affects the financial performance of
a fund positively, but not in a significant way. Further, we find with help from a regression of
only the last year of our period that Covid-19 has significantly improved the performance of
sustainable funds compared to the conventional portfolio. Finally, making one portfolio of the
funds with the highest ESG-score and one portfolio of the funds with the lowest ESG-score,
we do not find difference in returns featuring funds with high and low ESG-scores. | en_US |
