We unpack the company’s deforestation risk exposure as understood via its Forest IQ scores, the financial materiality of this exposure and the company’s deforestation performance reporting.
We then identify a selection of Article 8 and 9 bond funds that contain General Mills’ outstanding bonds, including recent issuances, and assess how, and whether, their mandates consider deforestation and land use conversion risks.
We find that these funds’ ESG screens typically do not account for deforestation risk specifically, even where they focus on environmental and climate criteria. This could mean investors may not be fully appraised of the deforestation-linked exposures in these funds when making allocations, which could lead them to take on unintended risk.
