Impact of ESG criteria on Investment Management Corporations decisions making

The aim of the paper is to describe in detail the environmental (E), social (S) and governance (G) ESG issues that are playing a crucial role in the global financial market, and to analyse how the world's leading investment management corporations build their investment portfolios by basing their decisions on these specific sustainability criteria. Sustainable finance not only places environmental, social and governance considerations at the heart of business and investment decisions, but is also able to generate long-term economic and social value by using both financial and environmental logic in defining capital investment choices. In the vast panorama of financial sustainability, the paper focus has been on ESG themes, which have attracted more attention in recent years especially in the European financial market. The idea is to understand how these sustainability criteria are established, and how green investment funds quantitatively and qualitatively assess the achievement of sustainability goals by the companies in their investment portfolio. To carry out this analysis, it has been necessary to understand how major global and European institutions are moving to regulate sustainable finance through both the introduction of mandatory certifications for companies and sustainability targets imposed on governments around the world. The final part of the paper looks more specifically at the criteria by which the world's leading investment funds shape their ESG investments by building up appropriate portfolios looking at the positive and critical aspects of this from a financial perspective.