ESG Investments: sustainability does not compromise performance

The purpose of this paper is to show how sustainable investments are “green” not at the expense of returns. For this scope, the financial products and their performances are analyzed in detail.
 The first chapter will present the explanation and the history of ESG. In particular, it will talk about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which have become a common language at the international level. Indeed, governments are called upon to review policies, regulations and governance models following their “instructions”. After a short introduction, the second part will be more technical. Precisely, topics as indexes, ESG products and financial instruments will be presented. Furthermore, there will be an explanation of markets and diffusion of these financial products, with the latest section dedicated to financial markets’ problems. Moreover, the fifth chapter will be focus on the stability of ESG investments and ESG funds; a detailed analysis will prove that they have been particularly resilient to the economic crisis from Covid-19. Therefore, it will be concluded that the growth of the phenomenon that has taken place in recent years has not been hindered even by the recent economic disturbances. Finally, in the last chapter, the risk analysis on ESG investments will be carried out to confirm how sustainable investments have performed better than traditional ones.