Analisi degli investimenti sostenibili: confronto tra investimenti con alto e basso punteggio ESG sotto i profili di rischio e rendimento

The thesis has the purpose of exploring the possibility that ESG and in general sustainable investments, in addition to benefit the environment, the quality of working and the correct way of manage, can also bring advantages to investors under the point of view of more profits and less risk compared to low-rate ESG products. After having mentioned the various reasons why it is fundamental to invest always more in sustainable assets, the second chapter debates about the normative framework about ESG investments and reporting, from the Paris Agreement of 2015 to the TEG report of March 2020 and the Taxonomy regulation, passing through the directive on non-financial reporting, the European Action Plan and the new SFDR regulation. The legal framework is necessary to understand why and how the investing world is changing and evolving concerning sustainable assets. Following in the thesis are explained the reasons why Morningstar and Sustainalytics are the best choices among the several rating providers to select the funds and conduct the analysis on sustainable and non-sustainable assets. Then are presented the several ratings by Morningstar: Sustainability Rating, ESG Commitment level, ESG Risk Rating, Analyst Rating, Star Rating and Quantitative Rating. The two mainly considered to perform the funds’ selection have been the Sustainability Rating (which indicates how much a fund is sustainable) and the Star rating (that instead is a valuation of the past performance of the fund). After a brief review of the positions of some researches about the same topic, where a common result is that profitability and sustainability are linked in the majority of the cases, the selection of the different funds on Morningstar investment universe has been performed, dividing the equity from the bond funds. The analysis took in consideration several parameters and metrics of risk and return and the results, even if not conclusive, often show a promising link between high ESG rates, lower risks and higher returns for what concerns the equity funds in the past years from 2018 to 2020, while for the bond funds the results in those years are less clear.