PRAISE FOR QUANTITATIVE METHODS FOR ESG FINANCE

“A timely and practical book that explains how to effectively adopt and incorporate ESG risk measurement and management, an issue currently facing both the investment and the issuer (corporate) communities. The topics covered will have broader applicability to financial intermediaries and regulatory agencies as well. This comprehensive work fills a vital gap on the quantitative side of ESG finance, where there is a growing critical need to harness the proliferation of newly available alternative data sources and for the associated quantitative techniques required to process and analyze this data.”

—BRADFORD HU, Chief Risk Officer, Executive Vice President, State Street

“In what is a fairly nascent and rapidly evolving field, Shmatov and Castelli provide to finance practitioners a much-needed comprehensive reference of fundamental and technical aspects of ESG risk measurement and management.”

—NICOLAS FRIES, CRO, Investment Risk, BNY Mellon

“Up-to-the minute, no-nonsense and uncommonly rigorous for its field.”

— RICHARD ROBB, Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

“Everyone talks about investing with ESG criteria, but there is a lot of confusion as to what exactly that means. This book is essential for understanding what an ESG strategy is and how you can get it right. Useful for both common investors and professionals, and also for supervisory authorities.”

— MARIA TERESA COMETTO, Journalist, Author, contributor to Investment & Pensions Europe and Corriere della Sera

A quantitative analyst’s introduction to the theory and practice of ESG finance

In Quantitative Methods for ESG Finance, accomplished risk and ESG experts Dr. Cyril Shmatov and Cino Robin Castelli deliver an incisive and essential introduction to the quantitative basis of ESG finance from a quantitative analyst’s perspective. The book combines the theoretical and mathematical bases underlying risk factor investing and risk management with accessible discussions of ESG applications.

The authors explore the increasing availability of non-traditional data sources for quantitative analysts and describe the quantitative/statistical techniques they’ll need to make practical use of these data. The book also offers:

• A particular emphasis on climate change and climate risks, both due to its increasing general importance and accelerating regulatory change in the space
• Practical code examples in a Python Jupyter notebook that use publicly available data to demonstrate the techniques discussed in the book
• Expansive discussions of risk factor investing, portfolio construction, ESG scoring, new ESG-driven financial products, and new financial risk management applications, particularly those making use of the proliferation of “alternative data”, both text and images

A must-read guide for quantitative analysts, investment managers, financial risk managers, investment bankers, and other finance professionals with an interest in ESG-driven investing, Quantitative Methods for ESG Finance will also earn a place on the bookshelves of graduate students of business and finance.