On the afternoon of October 25th, the 28th session of the Centennial Jiangcai Academic Lecture Series Jiaohu Financial Forum was successfully held in the lecture hall on the second floor of the School of Finance. Our alumni of the 2010 International Accounting major at the School of International Studies, lecturer in finance at the University of Exeter in the UK, principal in finance and marketing graduate program, and doctoral supervisor Dr. Chen Linquan, a researcher at the Association for Higher Education in the UK, was invited to give a lecture on "Benchmarking with Sustainability Mandates" in the academic lecture hall on the second floor of the Yizhen Building of our School of Finance. The event was hosted by Vice Dean Jiang Chonghui of the School of Finance, and some teachers and graduate students from the School of Finance attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Vice Dean Jiang Chonghui, on behalf of the School of Finance, welcomed and thanked Dr. Chen Linquan, and introduced his research field and academic achievements. Dr. Chen Linquan expressed his hope to have in-depth exchanges and learning with the attending teachers and students.

Dr. Chen Linquan first introduced the dual goals of sustainable investment, namely excellent financial performance and ESG performance, and pointed out that investors and fund managers hope to achieve both financial and ESG performance simultaneously; Subsequently, the relationship between its evaluation and ESG was analyzed at the stock and fund levels, and a portfolio perturbation approach was developed to estimate customized fund benchmarks with sustainable tasks; Finally, based on ESG enhancement or ESG mitigation benchmarks, the impact of sustainability tasks on fund risk return characteristics was empirically studied.

Dr. Chen Linquan believes that the trade-off between financial performance and ESG performance is non-linear; All funds tend to be "average" in terms of ESG ratings; The fund includes achieving higher ESG financial performance; Funds often perform poorly in reducing ESG targets; However, these impacts vary by fund.

​During the questioning and interaction session, the attending teachers and students actively discussed the empirical model, the optimal solution of the model, and whether the differences between domestic fund managers and North American fund teams would affect ESG scores. Dr. Chen Linquan responded one by one based on the actual situation at home and abroad, and integrated multidisciplinary knowledge.

At this point, the academic lecture has come to a successful conclusion, and Vice Dean Jiang Chonghui expresses sincere gratitude to Professor Chen Linquan for his wonderful lecture. During the lecture, there was a strong atmosphere of discussion, which promoted academic exchange between teachers and students.