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Manish Shakdwipee

Manish Shakdwipee

Executive Director, MSCI Research

Manish Shakdwipee focuses on research that supports ESG and climate index solutions for asset owners and investment managers in the Asia-Pacific region. In his previous roles at Ecofirst Advisory Services and EY, he advised clients across industries in developing carbon-mitigation projects and strategies to achieve their sustainability goals. Manish received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and doctorate in sustainable energy systems from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

Research and Insights

Articles by Manish Shakdwipee

    Indian Firms Advance in Financially Pertinent Sustainability Risks

    4 mins read Blog | Mar 26, 2024 | Dinank Chitkara, Manish Shakdwipee

    Indian firms have made notable strides in managing their financially relevant sustainability risks over the last five years. Understanding their progress could offer valuable insights to investors in India’s equity market.    

    Investor Pressure May Help APAC Companies Minimize Asset-Stranding Risk

    7 mins read Blog | Mar 25, 2024 | Elchin Mammadov, Manish Shakdwipee

    A managed coal phaseout could help power generators reduce asset-stranding risk and help countries achieve their decarbonization targets. What might this mean for utilities companies and why might active engagement be the way forward for investors? 

    What’s Been Driving the Carbon Footprint of the MSCI Climate Action Indexes?

    6 mins read Blog | Feb 8, 2024 | Xinxin Wang, Guillermo Cano, Manish Shakdwipee

    We take a deep dive into the financed-emissions intensity of the MSCI Climate Action Indexes by isolating the effect of various decarbonization drivers to offer a comparative perspective against their parent indexes.

    Remapping the Investment World

    Podcast | Feb 1, 2024 | Manish Shakdwipee, Rohit Gupta

    For global investors, the idea of individual country or market allocations isn’t new. But in today’s world, with a dynamic geopolitical map, the rewiring of supply chains and a greater focus on sustainable investing, it may be time for a new approach. 

    Reimagining Country Investing

    Research Report | Jan 29, 2024 | Rohit Gupta, Anil Rao, Manish Shakdwipee, Hitendra D Varsani

    We introduce an integrated framework to investing in individual country and regional markets, analyzing macroeconomic risks and new growth opportunities as well as the role of sustainable investments in a globally diversified portfolio. 

    China’s Role in Supply-Chain Strategies

    5 mins read Blog | Jan 8, 2024 | Wei Xu, Manish Shakdwipee

    Are parts of the global supply chain more reliant on China than other parts? We explore which industries and themes may be more dependent on China from a manufacturing-ecosystem and raw-resources perspective.  

    Understanding MSCI ESG Indexes: Methodologies, Facts and Figures

    Research Report | Oct 11, 2023 | Guido Giese, Ashish Lodh, Manish Shakdwipee, Saurabh Katiyar

    We explore the methodologies behind the MSCI ESG Indexes to see how they integrate ESG considerations. We also assess the differences of these approaches in terms of the financial and ESG characteristics to understand potential trade-offs. 

    What’s Been Driving the Carbon Footprint of MSCI’s ESG Indexes?

    5 mins read Blog | Sep 22, 2023 | Xinxin Wang, Manish Shakdwipee, Guido Giese

    We analyze the index-level carbon emissions of the MSCI ACWI, ACWI ESG and Socially Responsible Investing Indexes, in terms of both financed emissions and emissions intensities, to see what the trends are and what’s driving them.

    Climate and ESG Indexes in Focus: Let’s Get Specific

    6 mins read Blog | Jul 31, 2023 | Manish Shakdwipee, Guillermo Cano, Xinxin Wang

    How did our flagship climate and ESG indexes fare versus the broader market in the second quarter? And how much did constituent companies decarbonize since the quarter before? We delve into the specifics.

    Climate and ESG Indexes in Focus: Sectors Told the Story

    6 mins read Blog | May 8, 2023 | Guillermo Cano, Yuliya Plyakha Ferenc, Manish Shakdwipee, Román Mendoza

    We review the drivers of performance for ESG and climate indexes over the first quarter of 2023, and investigate the explanatory power of the carbon-efficiency factor over time. 

    How to Evaluate Climate Metrics and Avoid the Big Confusion

    5 mins read Blog | Feb 8, 2023 | Guido Giese, Manish Shakdwipee

    Climate metrics can often be a daunting field, with misunderstanding and confusion rife. We present a two-step toolkit that can help investors identify the most suitable metrics as they look to gauge progress toward their climate-investing goals.

    Climate Indexes' Year in Review: The Journey Toward a Low-Carbon Transition

    6 mins read Blog | Jan 26, 2023 | Saurabh Katiyar, Manish Shakdwipee

    There have been several dynamics that influenced climate-index performance in 2022. We examine the impact of macroeconomic and financial conditions on risk, return and sectors, as well as the management of low-carbon transition risks.

    Understanding MSCI’s Climate Metrics

    Research Report | Jan 10, 2023 | Manish Shakdwipee, Guido Giese, Zoltán Nagy

    With no “one fits all” solution, to help investors identify the most suitable climate metrics, we take an in-depth look at MSCI ESG Research’s climate metrics in terms of what they measure, how they are calculated and their potential use cases. 

    Despite Energy Outperformance, Climate Indexes Were Resilient

    6 mins read Blog | Oct 6, 2022 | Saurabh Katiyar, Manish Shakdwipee, Xinxin Wang

    There have been several dynamics that have influenced climate-index performance in the third quarter and first nine months of 2022. We examine the impact of macroeconomic and financial conditions on risk, return and sectors. 

    Understanding Carbon Exposure in Private Assets

    6 mins read Blog | Oct 14, 2021 | Manish Shakdwipee

    Public companies and managers of listed assets face growing disclosure requirements. But private companies have not received the same level of scrutiny. How can investors in private assets calculate their exposure to carbon emitters, and what can they do about it?

    Climate Change and Climate Risk: An Index Perspective

    Research Report | Jul 10, 2019 | Manish Shakdwipee, Stuart Doole

    A transition to a low-carbon economy could reduce demand for carbon-intensive products and services in favor of low-/zero-carbon counterparts. This migration in demand could also alter the risk-return profile — not only of individual companies but of some entire industries. The MSCI Climate Change Index aims to reflect these potential changes, increasing the index weight of companies identified as exposed to a low-carbon transition, while decreasing the weight in companies negatively exposed...

    Investment Risks in Carbon-Dependent Industries

    Blog | Dec 10, 2018 | Manish Shakdwipee

    Carbon-intensive industries have been the primary focus of attention for investors looking to reduce carbon-related risks in their portfolios. But these particular industries are only part of the picture. Institutional investors may want to look beyond the usual suspect carbon-intensive industries to better understand the end-to-end risks.

    How Funds Are Positioned for a Low-Carbon Future

    Blog | Oct 25, 2017 | Manish Shakdwipee

    As the world moves toward a low-carbon future, companies of many stripes are adopting renewable and clean-energy technologies. That, of course, has implications for stocks and the portfolios that hold them. How can asset owners understand the carbon-transition risks in their portfolios?

    How Resilient are Mutual Funds to the Low Carbon Transition

    Research Report | Sep 20, 2017 | Manish Shakdwipee

    A confluence of regulatory and non-regulatory factors is driving the adoption of renewable energy and other clean energy technologies globally, while headwinds facing fossil fuels continue to mount1. Measuring how one’s investments are positioned relative to this transition towards a low carbon economy can help the end investor understand what long-term bets – intended and otherwise – are embedded in their portfolios. 1 See: Regulatory Easing: Potential Impact on Energy Sector  

    How Institutional Investors Are Responding to Climate Change

    Blog | Sep 14, 2017 | Manish Shakdwipee

    How are institutional investors tackling climate-change risk in their portfolios? Thanks partly to global initiatives such as the Montreal Pledge and the Portfolio Decarbonization Coalition, both launched in 2014, many institutional investors have moved quickly to understand the long-term portfolio implications of climate change and to adopt climate-risk management techniques.

    Regulatory Easing: Potential Impact on Energy Sector

    Research Report | Jun 1, 2017 | Matt Moscardi, Manish Shakdwipee

    Using market returns as a starting point, we focus on the U.S. energy sector to better understand how the possibility of regulatory easing could affect sector, company and investor performance. For the energy sector, we suggest that regulatory changes alone may be unlikely to upend global supply and demand dynamics for fossil fuels, with renewable energy adoption driven by global market-led factors extending beyond regulations in a single market. Falling demand for fossil fuels due to...

    Comparing Carbon Estimates Against Disclosures

    Research Report | Sep 1, 2016 | Linda-Eling Lee, Manish Shakdwipee

    In December 2015, we identified 277 companies that were constituents of the MSCI ACWI Investable Market Index (IMI) that had disclosed their 2013 scope 1+2 carbon emissions in 2015 for the first time. This provided a unique opportunity to test out carbon estimation models on which institutional investors have had to rely. We found that the methods that have been around the longest – which rely on Economic Input Output Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA) models – were not very accurate when...

    Scenarios, Stress Tests and Strategies for Second Quarter 2016 - The Rise of Populism

    Research Report | Jul 14, 2016 | Linda-Eling Lee, Remy Briand, Carlo Acerbi, Raghu Suryanarayanan, Thomas Verbraken, Manish Shakdwipee

    The decision by a majority of U.K. voters to leave the European Union shines a light on fissures between perceived winners and losers from globalized markets and highlights for investors the importance of factoring the consequences of inequality and popular discontent into their views. The latest edition of MSCI’s “Scenarios, Stress Tests and Strategies” examines the potential impacts on institutional portfolios of a tide of populist sentiment across Europe and the U.S.

    Implications of COP21: How do Corporate Carbon Reduction Targets Stack up?

    Research Report | Dec 15, 2015 | Laura Nishikawa, Manish Shakdwipee

    The climate deal struck in Paris set an ambitious goal of limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, with a stretch goal of 1.5 degrees. While the key elements of legally binding country emission reduction targets appeared to be missing, countries agreed to submit five-year updates to their emissions reduction pledges and to establish a framework for monitoring, measuring and verifying emissions reductions.

    RE EXAMINING THE TAX GAP

    Research Report | Jun 3, 2015 | Matt Moscardi, Gaurav Trivedi, Manish Shakdwipee

    Since our analysis in December 2013 on the diversity of tax rates paid by MSCI World companies, the regulatory outlook has shifted substantially. In our updated analysis, we identify 243 companies (out of 1,093 relevant1 companies within the MSCI World Index constituents) as having a large tax gap, paying an average rate of 17.7%, versus 34.0%, if these companies were paying taxes in the jurisdictions where they generate revenues.