Trucost signs up to UNEP FI’s Principles for Responsible Investment

2 May 2006, London:

Trucost, the international environmental research organisation announces its support of the United Nation Environment Programme Finance Initiative's Principles for Responsible Investment. The Principles, which were launched by leading asset owners last week in New York, are to be signed today in Paris by major European institutional investors and other parties.

The Principles emphasise the importance of addressing governance, environmental and social considerations within a framework for achieving better long-term returns and more sustainable markets.

As a professional service partner, Trucost is committed to providing excellent research and better metrics to support the implementation of the Principles.

Simon Thomas, CEO of Trucost, said: "The Principles are an important step forward in the inclusion of environmental impacts as a mainstream issue that is affecting the risk and return on investments. As an environmental research company, Trucost aims to provide quantitative research that enables asset owners and institutional investors to identify precisely these impacts within their portfolio and therefore manage them more effectively."

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Simon Thomas, chief executive of Trucost, is available for interview – please call Nick Dentont at Hogarth on 020 7357 9477 or Ashleigh Lezard on 020 7321 3731

About Trucost (www.trucost.com)

Trucost Plc is an environmental research organisation that was founded in 2000 to help companies and investors understand the environmental impacts of business activities in financial terms.

Trucost Plc offers expert advice and research to major corporations, both public and private, institutional investors and to the UK Government and associated agencies.

Over the past six years Trucost has built up a database of the environmental impacts and disclosures of over 3000 companies, with the climate change database being the world’s largest repository of climate change disclosures. Trucost has developed considerable experience and expertise in the area of environmental performance, analysis and reporting, working with leading multinational companies in a range of business sectors including Avis, Christian Salvesen, Prudential, LogicaCMG, Legal & General and Land Securities Plc

Institutional investors use Trucost’s research to support due diligence and active engagement activities by incorporating environmental performance measurement into their investment decisions. Clients include Hermes, Standard Life, Fidelity, Henderson Global Investors and Merrill Lynch. Institutional investors also use the information to assess the environmental footprint of their portfolios, highlighting poor performers and therefore better understand where environmental risk lies in their portfolios.

David Pitt-Watson, Chief Executive, Hermes Focus Asset Management: "Trucost's ability to dig out the data about the environmental consequences of production is absolutely second to none anywhere in the globe."