A publicly traded mutual fund firm with $1.5 trillion in AUM is making an impact investing push.

Robert W. "Rob" Sharps T. Rowe Price President, Head of Investments, Group Chief Investment Officer

Yesterday, Hari Balkrishna (a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price [profile]) and Rob Sharps (president, group chief investment officer, and head of investments) confirmed the launch of the T. Rowe Price Global Impact Equity Fund. The fund, which launched yesterday, is the Baltimore-based asset manager's first impact fund.

Balkrishna PMs the new fund, which will be benchmarked against the MSCI All-Country World Index and uses an all-cap, high-conviction, active approach. It comes in Investor Class shares (at 94 basis points, with a minimum initial investment of $2,500) and I Class shares (at 79 bps, with a minimum of $1 million).

"T. Rowe Price has been preparing for the launch of this fund and similar strategies for quite some time. Over the last decade, we have invested significantly to incorporate ESG factors into our investment research platform, recognizing that the long-term sustainability of our portfolio companies is critical to their financial success and to our mission of helping clients reach their financial goals," Sharps states. "The launch of the Global Impact Equity Fund, the first of several impact strategies we plan to offer in the future, is a natural extension of this process."

"The world and financial markets have reached a turning point with respect to addressing the health of our planet and the widespread inequality that continues to plague society at large," Balkrishna states. "Increasingly, global investors want to invest not just in accordance with their wallets but with their values."

Like with other T. Rowe funds, the new impact fund's vendors include: Willkie Farr & Gallagher as legal counsel; JPMorgan Chase and State Street as custodians; PwC as independent accounting firm; and T. Rowe itself as distributor and transfer agent (in addition to investment advisor). 

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