作者: Ed Hall Isabel Rodriguez King & Wood Mallesons London, United Kingdom
在过去数年，环境、社会和管理（ESG）问题对私募基金及风险投资基金管理人及其投资者而言越来越重要。在存在各种确保责任投资的压力的同时，某些证据显示ESG政策可能对收益有正面影响。因此，启动融资流程的管理人必须面对许多尽职调查要求。责任投资原则（PRI）——一项由投资者与联合国合作发起的倡议——最近发布了《有限合伙人责任投资尽职调查问卷》（尽调问卷），以帮助投资者并鼓励更为标准化的尽职调查。
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have become increasingly important to private equity and venture capital fund managers and their investors over the last few years. And as well as the various pressures to ensure responsible investment, there is some evidence that ESG policies may have a positive effect on returns. Managers starting the fund raising process are therefore subject to numerous due diligence requests, and the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), an investor initiative in partnership with the United Nations, have recently released the “Limited Partners’ Responsible Investment Due Diligence Questionnaire” (DDQ) to assist investors and encourage more standardised due diligence.
标准化的问题不仅可以协助那些没有正式的ESG政策或此前尚未在尽职调查阶段提交ESG问题的投资者，还能帮助管理人减少回答相同主题下不同问题的时间和成本。实际上，制定尽调问卷一部分是为了回应已签署PRI的管理人的如下诉求：整个行业需要更大程度上的统一。PRI曾敏锐地指出，尽调问卷不应用作核查清单，也绝非穷尽一切内容，而是启动投资者和管理人之间对话的工具，投资者完全可以修改问题或增加一些他们自己的问题。
As well as assisting those investors who may not have a formal ESG policy, or who have not previously submitted questions at the due diligence stage about ESG, standardised questions could also help managers by cutting down on the time and cost required to answer different questions on the same subject. In fact, the creation of the DDQ was partly in response to requests from managers who have signed up to the PRI for more consistency across the industry. The PRI have been keen to point out that the DDQ should not be used as a checklist and is by no means exhaustive, but more a tool to establish a dialogue between investors and managers, and that investors may well want to tailor the questions or indeed add some of their own.
尽调问卷涵盖四个领域：基金的ESG政策以及ESG因素的影响，ESG相关风险的管理和价值创造，在被投资公司层面对ESG管理的贡献，以及与有限合伙人就ESG相关问题的沟通。尽调问卷一共有21个问题，但还附有一个指南文件，其中提供了对所提问题有用的背景，以及某些有限合伙人和普通合伙人就ESG开展工作的方式样例和案例研究。指南文件还包括有限合伙人可能希望向普通合伙人提出的其它“已形成的问题”。这些“已形成的问题”在最初问题的基础上进一步扩大了范围，且其中很多问题要求列举一些过去发生ESG问题的情形，或描述发现和管理ESG事件的程序。指南文件中还有一些公共资源的链接可以帮助有限合伙人，如ESG的CDC工具包。
The DDQ covers four areas: the ESG policy of the fund and the influence of ESG factors, management of ESG related risks and value creation, contribution to ESG management at portfolio company level, and communication with LPs on ESG related matters. There are 21 questions in total, but it is also accompanied by a guidance document which provides useful background to the questions posed as well as case studies and examples of how some LPs and GPs work in relation to ESG. The guidance document also includes further “developed questioning” that LPs may want to put to GPs, which expand on the initial questions and many ask for examples of past situations where an ESG issue has arisen or descriptions of procedures that are in place to identify and manage ESG incidents. There are also links to publicly available resources to assist LPs, such as the CDC toolkit for ESG.
ESG仍将是管理人及其投资者面临的一个重要问题，这一点毫无疑问。尽调问卷和CDC工具包等鼓励行业内更大统一性的资源应当受到欢迎。与其他标准化的尝试一样，无论是报告、尽职调查问卷或其他问题，重要的是记住“一刀切”的方式不可能始终合适。而且，PRI也已经明确表示这种方式并非其意图，其目的旨在促进各方之间的讨论，并且在处理ESG等问题时，需要考虑私募基金作为一种资产类别的多样性。
There is no doubt that ESG will continue to be an important issue for managers and their investors, and resources such as the DDQ and the CDC toolkit that encourage greater consistency in approach across the industry should be welcomed. As with any attempt to standardise, whether it be reporting, due diligence questionnaires or other issues, it is important to remember that a “one-size fits all” approach may not always be suitable. And the PRI have made it clear that this is not the intention, with the aim being to promote discussions between all parties and that consideration needs to be given to the diverse nature of private equity as an asset class when approaching issues such as ESG.
阅读更多文章，请点击此处。
Read more articles, please click here.