Fosun Strives to be a Global Leader in ESG

(6 September 2021, Hong Kong) Fosun International officially was selected as a constituent stock of Hang Seng ESG 50 Index (top 50 large-to-mid cap). Hang Seng ESG 50 Index aims at capturing the overall performance of Top 50 ESG leaders with relatively high market capitalization listed in Hong Kong. The inclusion of Fosun International reflects the recognition by Hang Seng Indexes Company Limited in Fosun International’s exceptional performance in sustainability, including environmental, social and governance (ESG).

Fosun International has been selected as a constituent stock of the Hang Seng Sustainability Corporate Benchmark Index for two consecutive years, which includes 87 Hong Kong-listed companies with the most outstanding performance in corporate sustainability (top 20% of the Hang Seng Composite Index constituent stocks). 

Hang Seng Indexes Company Limited introduced its first Sustainability or ESG index as early as 2010 and appointed Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) as an independent professional assessment agency to adopt its dedicated sustainability performance assessment and scoring criteria to evaluate the ESG performance of approximately 500 Hong Kong-listed companies and more than 1,200 A-share listed companies. Hang Seng Indexes Company Limited has pointed out that when building a diversified portfolio, investors are paying increasing attention to a company’s sustainability performance. As a result, sustainable investing is gaining more popularity globally.

As ESG has become a global mainstream topic, various regulatory bodies have actively introduced corresponding regulations and guidelines to encourage listed companies to attach higher importance to ESG governance and responsibilities. Thus, the market and investors are paying more attention to ESG’s impacts on the company’s reputation, performance and risk management.

As for Fosun, ESG governance is a comprehensive, top-down unified standards and requirements, and a continuous evolutionary process.

ESG rating has been a part that Fosun greatly valued and actively participated in for many years. In recent years, Fosun performed outstandingly in many aspects of ESG. While developing rapidly, Fosun leveraged its own industrial advantages to actively give back to the society through public welfare programs such as supporting the combat against the pandemic, providing disaster relief, Rural Doctors, education, culture, and entrepreneurship support.

Promote ESG Sustainable Development of its Entire Business Segments

As a corporate citizen with a high degree of social responsibility, Fosun diligently practices its original aspiration of "Self-improvement, Teamwork, Performance, and Contribution to Society".

In recent years, Fosun achieved remarkable ESG performance. Its MSCI ESG rating was A and the Hang Seng Sustainability rating was A+; and it has been included as a constituent stock of the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Benchmark Index (top 20%); FTSE Russell ESG rating was upgraded significantly, which is higher than the industry average.

In June 2021, Fosun International was awarded the "ESG Benchmark Awards - The ESG Leader" Gold Award in recognition of its efforts and outstanding performance in the aspects of environmental protection, social responsibility, and corporate governance.

In December 2020, Fosun International received “The Asset ESG Corporate Gold Award” and “Best Initiative in Innovation” award by the magazine, The Asset. Fosun’s efforts and contributions to the global combat against the pandemic, and COVID-19 nucleic acid test kit which was rapidly self-developed by its subsidiaries in particular, were highly recognized by the The Asset’s jury. In addition, the jury also gave recognition to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine which was jointly developed by Fosun and Germany’s BioNTech.

In November 2020, Fosun International was awarded “Asia’s Best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Award” by the magazine, Corporate Governance Asia, in recognition of its active contribution to the global combat against the pandemic.

In November 2020, Fosun won the “ESG Leading Enterprise Award” in the Category I - Market capitalization over HK$20 billion and “Leading ESG Initiative Award” co-organized by the Bloomberg Businessweek Chinese Edition and Deloitte, one of the world's largest accounting firms.

Fosun, as a global large-scale private enterprise, has always actively shouldered its social responsibility. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in January 2020, Fosun has successively delivered supplies that were urgently in need to over 20 countries and regions at home and abroad. During the pandemic last year, Fosun was the first batch of enterprises to actively respond to national calls. When China was hit the hardest by the pandemic and supplies were scarce, Fosun swiftly deployed global resources and delivered supplies to China immediately to support the domestic fight against the pandemic. In April 2021, the pandemic prevention and control situation in India and other countries and regions deteriorated. Fosun Foundation joined hands with its friendly enterprises to swiftly donate medical supplies that were urgently needed in India such as oxygen concentrators, ventilators, and surgical masks, etc., to India. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, Fosun has donated a cumulative total of over 147 million pieces of anti-pandemic supplies globally.

In addition to leveraging its global resources advantages to urgently deploy protective materials to assist countries affected by the pandemic, Fosun also partnered with Germany’s BioNTech to jointly develop the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (COMIRNATY^®, also known as BNT162b2), which has been put into use in Hong Kong SAR and Macao SAR in March this year, and arrived in the Taiwan region on 2 September, playing an active role in the pandemic prevention and control in Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR and Taiwan region. 

In July 2021, Fosun Foundation announced its donation of RMB50 million in cash and resources to Henan province on the day after the torrential downpour. It rapidly gathered and delivered the supplies needed by the frontline as urgent disaster relief. In addition, Fosun Foundation collaborated with Fosun’s member companies and partners to initiate the “New Mihe Project” to provide assistance in the reconstruction of Mihe Health Center and the primary healthcare system in Gongyi City in the long term.

Looking globally, Fosun has been working unremittingly to build a “malaria-free world” for over 15 years. According to the incomplete statistics, a total of 24 antimalarial drugs of Fosun Pharma have passed the Prequalification of Medicine (PQ) certification by the World Health Organization, and Fosun Pharma has supplied more than 200 million artesunate injections to the international market since 2005. Artesun^® (artesunate for injection), a proprietary innovative drug of Fosun Pharma has saved more than 40 million lives of patients with severe malaria, most of which are African children under 5 years old.

Since last year, Fosun has held multiple meetings to discuss and study the issues of carbon emissions peak and carbon neutrality. In particular, various businesses, such as Nanjing Iron & Steel, Hainan Mining, Fosun Tourism, Fosun Pharma etc., with different operating models and needs, are all actively working on it. Fosun has also established its strategic goal to achieve carbon emissions peak and carbon neutrality, striving to achieve carbon emissions peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality target by 2060 together with its member companies.

Fosun for Good, Practice Shared Prosperity

As a consumer group rooted in China, Fosun established its original aspiration of “Self-improvement, Teamwork, Performance, and Contribution to Society" at the start. Fosun actively shoulders corporate social responsibilities while developing its businesses. Over the years, Fosun Foundation has integrated Fosun's industrial resource advantages to carry out philanthropic work in the fields of rural revitalization, culture, education, art, youth entrepreneurship, and employment etc. It also makes donations to more than 40 public welfare programs every year to promote community development, improve people's livelihoods and enhance social well-being.

Rural Doctors is one of the key initiatives to promote shared prosperity. Under the guidance of the National Health Commission, Fosun launched the “Rural Doctors Poverty Alleviation” program (or “Rural Doctors Program”) at the end of 2017. In the past four years, the program has covered 72 counties in 16 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions across the country (all formerly national-level poverty-stricken counties), supported 23,956 rural doctors in 12,545 health clinics in administrative villages, benefited 3 million grassroots families.

Fosun and its member companies actively participated in the "Ten Thousand Enterprises Helping Ten Thousand Villages" campaign and helped to lift over 50 impoverished villages across the country out of poverty, including four "poverty-stricken villages". On 25 February 2021, Fosun won the title of "National Advanced Collective in Poverty Alleviation" at the National Poverty Alleviation Summary and Commendation Conference in Beijing for its "Health and Warm Heart - Rural Doctors Program”.

In the future, Fosun will further actively implement the national calls for promoting shared prosperity. On the one hand, Fosun will continue to focus on deepening the development of the family consumption industry and promote shared prosperity in the society through high-quality development; on the other hand, Fosun will leverage its industrial advantages and invest its industrial resources in areas such as Health, to coordinate regional development, rural revitalization, and poverty relief work.

 This year marks the first year of rural revitalization. Through the Rural Doctors Program, Fosun helps rural doctors to better perform their duties, mitigate the problem of villagers returning to poverty due to illness, assist in rural revitalization and promote rural prosperity. In addition, Fosun will also help the underprivileged through education, culture, employment and other public welfare programs and contribute to narrow the income gap between regions, urban and rural areas, and residents, endeavoring to achieve shared prosperity in the society.

Top-Down Long-Term Assurance Mechanism

To ensure the smooth and continuous advancement of various ESG initiatives, Fosun established a top-down ESG improvement long-term mechanism to continuously promote sustainable development. Fosun regards ESG management performance as a KPI in the performance and remuneration evaluation process of executive directors.

To establish a standardized ESG governance structure and management system, Fosun established an ESG Committee under the Board of Directors to strengthen ESG management by the Board of Directors in March 2019. The committee consists of six board members, and an independent non-executive director to serve as the chairman of the board.

For daily ESG management, the Company established an ESG working group to assist the ESG committee in implementing ESG initiatives and ensure the establishment of appropriate and effective ESG risk management and internal control systems. This ESG working group covers 20 key functional departments including the Office of Board Secretary, Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Centre, Capital Markets and Investor Relations Department, the Environment, Health, Safety, and Quality Supervision Department (EHSQ), and the Fosun Foundation, together with the subsidiaries to implement various ESG indicators.

The corporate cultural values of "Self-improvement, Teamwork, Performance, and Contribution to Society" were put forward by Fosun at the beginning of its business and these sustainable cultural values are still applicable to this day. Fosun, which is about to enter the year of “30 years’ establishment”, it has built a solid foundation based on its “Performance”, and “Contribution to Society” has become Fosun’s driver to step up its ESG effort.

As a highly globalized company that is rooted in China and going global, Fosun strives to be a global leader in ESG. Fosun believes that a company with remarkable ESG performance and excellent financial results will thrive forever.

For more details of Fosun ESG, please visit Fosun International ESG website:
https://www.fosun.com/development/