Yulia Yelnikova

Significant gap in investment resources for financing Sustainable Development Goals can be overcome with the revitalization of the corporate social responsibility mechanism of the financial sector institutions, for example banks and stock exchanges as the largest players in the global financial sector. The most relevant for them are Goals 1, 5, 8, 10, 13, 17. Incorporating these goals into activities of the financial sector institutions requires not only the activation of their CSR mechanism in the directions indicated by the targets, but also the radical restructuring of all business processes and the reorientation of their overall sustainability strategy. Analysis of current sustainability reporting disclosure by financial sector institutions in global and regional aspects was conducted. Based on the analysis, the authors define the role of CSRs of banks and stock exchanges in SDG financing as follows: banks – ensuring their own sustainability and efficiency through CSR mechanisms, formation of new tools, methods and technologies of financial support of SDG; stock exchanges – minimization of information asymmetry in investor decision making, taking into consideration ESG criteria, formation of exemplary disclosure practices and new markets and market benchmarks by listing companies.

This paper is devoted to the investigation of environmental, social and governance investment (investment with ESG criterion) normative base in the context of standardization process in sustainable economy financing. Complexity of such standardization and the lack of commonly accepted regulations, indexes metrics are under discussions of scholars, which encourage the need for clear guidance in ESG investment. 651 sustainability rating products and more than 300 investment policy instruments in different countries show the need for classifying the ESG standards. The solution of this scientific and practical task is based on the developed ESG investment standards system classifications. Proposed classification incorporates such criteria as level of standards adoption, mandatory degree, sectorial specificity, degree of companies’ awareness of responsible activity, ensuring transparency and the benchmarks formation, creating the institutional support of the ESG investment standardization process in sustainable economy and making more grounded investment and regulatory decisions.

This paper is devoted to the comparing stock portfolios of the largest conventional and responsible Ukrainian companies as the basis for substantiating the structure of an optimal investment portfolio in the current conditions of development of the financial market of Ukraine. The empirical basis of the research was the data of quotations of shares of 6 most liquid conventional and 6 responsible companies in the Ukrainian and Warsaw exchanges. The methodological basis of calculations was the classic Markowitz portfolio optimization model. The key hypothesis of the research was to check that the conventional investment portfolios of Ukrainian companies outperform the responsible investment portfolios by their parameters (return, risk). This hypothesis was rejected. The obtained results have not only theoretical significance – both the rationale for the threat of responsible investment in Ukraine and the applied value for market participants in terms of investment decisions making, taking into consideration the ESG criteria, and the formation of investment portfolios from shares of the responsible companies, the key parameters of which exceed the conventional portfolios.