À propos
Valueco is a mission-driven company that aims to integrate human, social and natural capital into market performance and valuations through greater transparency and engagement between investors and companies. We are developing the first ESG benchmarking tool based on the collective intelligence of the responsible finance and sustainable development communities, useful to the entire ecosystem:
Professional investors are taking better account of companies' extra-financial capital in their investment decisions,
Companies improve their CSR strategy and have access to collective and structured feedback from the rest of the ecosystem,
Research organisations are developing new models to explicitly integrate ESG criteria and transition factors into company valuations.
We are a small team in contact with many actors working to achieve a transition towards a more sustainable and ambitious finance. We have ongoing research agreements with the MIT, Neoma Business School and Grenoble Ecole de Management.
Valueco values the diversity of the people it employs and serves as part of its mission-driven corporate commitments. We foster a work environment where individual differences are recognized, respected and valued in order to develop the full potential and harness the talents of each individual. For more information, please visit the Valueco website. Le poste est à pourvoir au sein de notre entreprise partenaire. Aucun frais a prévoir pour le candidat qui sera libre de choisir son école.
Le poste
The goal of this thesis is to analyse the correlation between the financial and extra-financial performances of listed corporates before providing guidelines to explicitly embed ESG into financial models (valuation, risk assessment, return predictions).
The rapidly evolving ESG landscape and growing market demand for ESG products entail new risks for all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Standards, frameworks and initiatives have multiplied to the point the market and claims from investors are almost impossible to monitor and understand properly. As a matter of fact, the indicators that drive sustainable investment and measure the ESG performances of financial assets are still mostly inefficient and prone to greenwashing.
The inherent complexity of finding correlations between extra-financial data and the financial performances of companies is enhanced by the low correlation between ESG scores themselves. As a matter of fact, available ESG scores from rating agencies and data providers already show a low correlation, as detailed by Chatterji et al. in a 2015 paper, and the multiplication of models is likely to worsen this phenomenon. The raw data underlying these scores also still lacks the quality to support efficient decision-making.
As a consequence, scores sold by rating agencies and data providers show wide divergences and, combined with their lack of transparency, are almost impossible to compare and understand properly. Many asset managers develop internal proprietary scoring models to make up for this opacity and justify their ESG commitment. The problem with the multiplicity of scores and methodologies is that they reflect disagreements among investors that affect asset prices, as demonstrated by Eugene F. Fama and Kenneth R. French.
Profil recherché
Fluent use of the English language (reading, writing, scientific discussion).
Financial valuation and ESG scoring models,
Data science and probability, ideally with Python coding skills.
Candidate profile and interest:
Motivation for research and bibliographic monitoring,
You enjoy quantitative analysis, open-ended and multifaceted problems,
You have a real drive to find out more about sustainable finance and make it the new norm,
Willingness to meet a number of people from the sustainable development and responsible finance ecosystems to tackle your cross-disciplinary research topic.
