Swedish financial firm Söderberg & Partners' annual sustainability report has given SEK 1.2bn (EUR 120m) pension firm Alecta a "red" rating in its traffic light system, based on interviews with 12 companies and publicly available data, business media IPE reports.

While SSP was delighted with its new green rating, Alecta's head of governance and sustainability, Carina Silberg, says Alecta "simply do[es] not recognize their description given our investment strategy and ESG integration," highlighting that the methodology of the survey does not work in the company's favor.

"Our portfolio is different from other large asset managers since we have such a narrow selection of companies, and invest in those we already believe are doing a good job within ESG," she said, adding that this also made Alecta's dialogues with the companies, which are a significant criteria for Söderberg & Partners, different: "If you only have 120 well-selected companies in your portfolio, it does not make any sense to have hundreds of dialogs when we can follow their work and see that it is developing in the right direction," she says.

Söderberg & Partners has conducted these surveys since 2014, focusing on the areas where companies' sustainability work differs the most – advocacy, ambitions and value creation. It is a relative ranking, meaning companies essentially compete with one another for green and amber status, rather than meeting external goals.

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