OEGUT-Responsible Investment Standard (RIS)

How can your company invest capital more sustainably? One answer to this question is the ÖGUT-RIS: Responsible Investment Standard - basic.

The approach is based on divestment: starting from a blacklist, companies with business activities that are linked to serious ethical problems and states with particularly unethical practices are excluded from the portfolio. ÖGUT-RIS, which has been developed in collaboration with rfu – Reinhard Friesenbichler Unternehmensberatung, is a tool which companies voluntarily commit themselves to using. It is applied to a company's entire investment volume, and compliance is checked by ÖGUT once a year on a date not known in advance.

For your company ÖGUT-RIS is an aid to active risk management and sustainable development. Companies and states far removed from any sustainable perspective are excluded from the portfolio.

Methodology

ÖGUT-RIS is applied to a company's entire investment volume. The starting-point is an up-to-date list published annually by the management consultancy rfu; it covers companies and states that are indisputably in breach of defined criteria.

Companies:

• Leading arms manufacturers worldwide
• Leading nuclear technology suppliers worldwide
• Leading nuclear power suppliers worldwide
• Leading companies deploying genetic engineering in agriculture worldwide
• Leading contributors to climate change worldwide

States:

• States with wildly excessive military budgets
• States with exceptionally low standards as regards democracy and human rights
• States with widespread application of the death penalty

The choice of which securities to exclude is based on information from internationally recognized sources and codes. The approach adopted here fits in with the growing number of divestment initiatives and the
demand that capital be withdrawn from (say) investments that harm the climate. ÖGUT's independent certification thus takes the initiative on a demand by voluntary organizations and makes it verifiable. A special feature of ÖGUTRIS is zero tolerance: it requires that all securities on the blacklist be excluded from the entire investment portfolio.