Our investment process
The investment process seeks to generate strong returns from investing in companies aiming to deliver profits through positive social and environmental impacts. The fund managers look at the world through the prism of three mega trends – Better resource efficiency (cleaner), Improved health (healthier) and Greater safety and resilience (safer) – and then 22 themes within these.
If a company has significant exposure to one of the themes, the fund managers verify how sustainable the rest of its activities are. For each company, the fund managers determine the ESG factors that are important indicators of future success and assess how well these are managed, via the proprietary Liontrust Sustainability Matrix.
Companies in which the fund managers invest will have robust business fundamentals with a proven ability to deliver high returns of equity (RoE) through sustaining margins and asset turnover. Typically, these companies have a maintainable competitive advantage through scale, technology or business model.
Sustainability Focus label
Funds managed by the team
Meet the team
The team has been managing the Sustainable Future (SF) funds for more than 22 years. A key differentiator is the fact all the sustainable elements are fully integrated within a single team. The team, which has over 200 years of combined experience, is headed by Peter Michaelis, who was previously Head of SRI at Aviva Investors and has been managing the SF funds since launch. The fund managers that joined from Alliance Trust Investments (ATI) as part of its acquisition were previously running the Sustainable Future fund range at Aviva Investors. The other lead equity managers are Simon Clements (who was formerly Head of Global Equities at Aviva Investors) along with Martyn Jones and Chris Foster who joined the management training programme at ATI as graduates. Fixed Income investments are managed by Kenny Watson (formerly at Ignis Asset Management), Aitken Ross and Jack Willis who also started their careers in the graduate scheme at ATI, and Connor Godsell. Harriet Parker leads on engagement activities across the team.
Peter Michaelis
Simon Clements
Martyn Jones
Chris Foster
Mike Appleby
Harriet Parker
Kenny Watson
Aitken Ross
Jack Willis
Connor Godsell
Mingming Huang
Deepesh Marwaha
Nancy Kondelidou
Sarah Nottle
Linnea Bengtsson
Linnea Bengtsson is an Equity Analyst who joined Liontrust in 2023 as part of the Sustainable Investment team. Linnea previously worked at Ninety One Asset Management (formerly Investec), where she gained four years industry experience as a Sustainable Equity Investment Analyst. Prior to this, Linnea interned at Citi Bank and Deutsche Bank. Linnea holds a BA (Hons) degree in Chinese from the University of Durham and ECNU, Shanghai. In addition, Linnea holds the Investment Management Certificate (IMC).
Hannah Muir
"Over our first 20 years of managing the SF funds, our investments have been successful because they have provided something society needs.”
