The NY Stock Exchange adds a vegan ETF on Sept 10
Announcing the launch of the world’s first vegan-friendly and climate-conscious ETF (exchange traded fund) onto the New York Stock Exchange on 10 September.
The US Vegan Climate ETF (ticker VEGN) was due to launch in January this year but there were some delays. However, the prospectus was filed and accepted by the SEC over the weekend.
This means that animal advocates and environmentalists now have an ethical stock investment option that is both cruelty-free and fossil fuel-free.
Animal lovers and people who care about saving the planet are rightly proud of their efforts to embrace plant-based eating, reduce their use of plastic, or implement a range of energy-efficient measures at home or work.
But until now, vegans and environmentalists have had little choice but to profit from animal cruelty and environmental devastation through their investment options. While interest in socially responsible investing (SRI) continues to grow, the availability of financial products that explicitly reject animal exploitation has been limited, if not completely absent in most markets.
“Our aim is to help vegans and animal activists take the pain out of their portfolios,” explains Claire Smith, CEO of Beyond Investing. “So many compassionate people go to great efforts to avoid buying products that contain animal ingredients or have been subject to cruel testing, but when it comes to their investment options, they’re actively, albeit often unwittingly, supporting companies and industries that exploit and torture animals. Our ETF offers them the opportunity to invest in line with their values. And because we love humans as much as other animals, we have defense and human rights screens as well.”
The listing of the US Vegan Climate Exchange Traded ETF (ticker VEGN) on September 10, 2019, onto the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is set to change that.
An ETF (short for Exchange Traded Fund) is an investment fund which is traded throughout the day on stock exchanges via banks, online brokers and roboadvisors. It goes up or down in value according to the price movements of stocks in the particular index it tracks.
The US Vegan Climate ETF, the first of its kind in the world, has been created by Beyond Investing, a team of experienced finance professionals who are all ethical vegans and animal activists in the US, Switzerland and the UK: Claire Smith, Lee Coates and Larry Abele.
