Horizons Newsletter – week 28 // 2020
Horizons is a bi-monthly Dasym Research initiative to show you how the Dasym themes have been in the news. We publish the Horizons on our website and as an email newsletter. If you wish to receive the email, please contact Investor Relations.
Do you have a question about the digitalization of consumer’s daily lives? As a research-driven investment company, we want to be relevant to you, so please provide us with your questions and remarks. Your feedback will help us to drive our research agenda.
Demystifying the demographics of responsible investing
Responsible investing, the act of incorporating environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions, has been gaining momentum over the past decade. Between 2012 and 2018, the value of assets under management in the European responsible investment market almost doubled, from €250b to €500b. One of the main explanations given for this growth is increased interest from millennials. According to various reports and investment professionals, millennials are interested in responsible investing because they want their investments to align with their personal values. A different survey, undertaken by investment research firm Morningstar, looks at revealed preferences of investors of all ages. While women and millennials on average show slightly stronger preferences for responsible investing, their study shows that this is mostly driven by a small group of exceptionally passionate investors. Furthermore, when controlled for sociodemographic variables such as income, age, political ideology and risk tolerance, the small difference in preference disappears. Looking at overall preferences, it is clear that investors of all genders and generations express interest in responsible investing.
Gaming to the home
Real estate developers in Hong Kong, the world’s most expensive housing market, are now offering ‘eSports arenas’ to attract homebuyers, hoping that these gaming facilities will bring residents closer together and foster a community feeling. They include VR pods and high-tech gaming equipment such as gaming mice, keyboards and computer hardware. This is yet another example of how gaming is breaking traditional confinement and boundaries, and it forces us to rethink in which areas video games could enter our lives beyond traditional computers, consoles and smartphones. With over 2.5 billion gamers in the world, videogames will become an important opportunity other industries could capitalize on and integrate into their own services. As such, gaming is becoming an increasingly important value-added service for other sectors and industries, such as construction companies that see gaming hardware as part of the home’s essentials, smart devices that connect to gaming furniture to create more immersive gaming experiences, eSports arenas that become new advertisement channels, or virtual spaces that create new avenues for customer relationship management.
UN celebrates 75th birthday in time of biggest crisis
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the UN, the largest and longest existing global political cooperation in modern history. According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the biggest achievements of the UN include the fact that there have been that no (nuclear) wars between super powers happened. The UN’s milestone celebration is happening at a time of uncertainty due to the critical global challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led major countries to turn inward. In a deepening rivalry with China, the U.S. has already cut funding for the World Health Organization and – before the pandemic – was already threatening to withdraw from NATO. At the same time, however, the Covid-19 crisis has underscored the importance of precisely the kind of international cooperation the UN stands for. As the pandemic deepens throughout the developing world, the UN will play a big role in managing impacts there. In fact, the pandemic and its aftermath could thus empower political forces that favor cooperation or nationalism and strengthen the continuance of the UN.
