Deep Dive into ESG Ratings and Scores – Opportunities to Enhance Investment Decisions

Laura Lutton is the risk pillar lead of the product management group at Morningstar Sustainalytics. She leads the firm’s research products designed to identify environmental, social and governance risks among equity and fixed-income issuers. This includes Sustainalytics’ flagship ESG Risk Rating, available for more than 17,000 global companies, as well as the Country Risk Rating, which ranks 169 sovereigns.

Lutton is a Morningstar veteran. Before assuming her current role in 2022, she was head of asset management solutions, where she led business and product development strategy for the firm’s asset-management clients. Prior to that, she worked in Morningstar’s research group from 1999 to 2019. Lutton ended her research tenure as head of Morningstar’s manager research team for North America, a role in the firm’s Morningstar Research Services, LLC subsidiary. She is also a founding member of Morningstar’s Women’s Initiative and served as executive sponsor in 2021 and 2022.

Lutton holds a bachelor’s degree in government and international studies from Colby College and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Gabriel Wilson-Otto is the Head of Sustainable Investing Strategy at Fidelity International and based in Hong Kong. Gabriel leads the global development of sustainable investment frameworks, policies, proprietary tools, and product offerings. He works closely with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders to support Fidelity’s sustainable investing ambition and to develop solutions for clients.

Gabriel joined Fidelity in 2021 from BNP Paribas Asset Management where he was the Global Head of Sustainability Research and had previously held the position of Head of Stewardship, Asia Pacific. Prior to BNPP AM, he was an Executive Director in Goldman Sachs’ Global Investment Research division and Head of GS SUSTAIN for Asia.

Gabriel holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance and Economics) and a Bachelor of Information Systems from the University of Melbourne. He is a CFA Charterholder.

David von Eiff joined CFA Institute in 2021 as a sustainability specialist. David brings has a combined 13 years of experience in environmental compliance, research, and sustainability. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy at the City University of Hong Kong and his Master of Science in Environmental Economics and Public Policy at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. His main research areas address the economic, sustainability and climate change issues associated with water supply management decisions. He previously spent 8 years regulatory specialist in Environmental, Health & Safety Management Systems, having clients across a wide range of industries to improve their environmental programs and identified methods by which they could make their operations more sustainable, including process redesign, water and energy conservation, and developing environmental management systems.