KOTA KINABALU: Malaysian student Nigel Cledwyn Motinius won the international investing competition "Sustainable Investment Challenge 2022" after overcoming 13,750 participants from 95 countries.
The competition was held by Milan-based Banka Generali with the cooperation of MIP Politecnico di Milano, MainStreet Partners Italy and CFA Society Italy.
Nigel, from Sabah, currently studying law in the University of the West of England, Bristol, expressed his joy that the investing system he implemented performed well in the competition's market condition.
The participants were judged on their commercial awareness, ability to trade in the market and perform detailed research of a company's environment, social and governance (ESG).
ESG is a scoring system aimed at informing investors the sustainability of a companies' business to prevent polluting companies from receiving investments and reward companies that focuses on its sustainability efforts.
During the investing stage, participants were expected to maintain profitable investments with good ESG scores while navigating the impact of world events.
At the end, top ranking participants were asked to write down a final report which explains their investment strategy.
Paolo Fabris, a partner at Advantage Reply said: "Nigel's report is the best one of all investment editions so far, he presented excellently the investment strategy he was going to follow, and he actually follow the strategy he designed."
On Malaysia's focus on integrating ESG into the country's economy, Nigel shared that there are a lot of difficulties in implementing a blanket approach, the ESG concepts are still ambiguous and there are a lot of variances for ESG scoring.
"For example, a law firm will not have the same score weightage when compared to a paper company. These will all have to be coordinated by the government, which will then have to abide by international standards.
"And the standard is being realised by big groups such as the European Union (EU), United States and big investment firms.
"But any country that wants to be competitive will have to double down on this effort. And I think the focus is well deserved," he explained.
Nigel said the ESG movement is growing rapidly in Malaysia, with the International Trade and Industry Ministry expecting to visit the United States, reinforcing Malaysia's value proposition as the preferred investment destination and trading partner with ESG as the primary focus.