2025 Stewardship Code Self-Assessment

Cadira Capital Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “the Company”) is committed to its mission of “Connecting the Investment Chain and Beyond”, aiming both to help address global environmental and social challenges and to deliver high-quality investment returns to our clients.

The core principle of Japan’s Stewardship Code—to promote the sustainable growth of investee companies while pursuing the medium- to long-term investment returns of clients and beneficiaries—aligns with our corporate philosophy. Accordingly, we have adopted the Code and disclosed our policies for addressing its principles.

We hereby present our self-assessment regarding the Company’s response to Japan’s Stewardship Code for the one-year period from July 2024 to June 2025, as summarized below.

Principle 1

Institutional investors should have a clear policy on how they fulfill their stewardship responsibilities and publicly disclose it.

Our investment strategies focus on companies that can both contribute to greater societal sustainability and achieve their own growth. For such companies, and for those expected to meet these criteria in the future, we fulfill our stewardship responsibilities through two core activities: (i) direct, engagement-focused dialogue with management and (ii) the exercise of voting rights at general shareholders’ meetings, both aimed at encouraging management improvement.

Based on Japan’s Stewardship Code, we disclose our stewardship policy on our website. In line with this policy, we have conducted dialogue with companies to encourage management enhancement, and exercised our voting rights at shareholders’ meetings to express our position as shareholders.

Principle 2

Institutional investors should have a clear policy on managing conflicts of interest in fulfilling their stewardship responsibilities and publicly disclose it.

We emphasize the balanced development of investee companies’ stakeholders—including the environment, society, and shareholders. Accordingly, in fulfilling our stewardship responsibilities, we take care not to act in ways that would benefit only a subset of stakeholders.

For investments or voting involving companies with which we have business relationships, we follow internal rules and, when necessary, seek input from external advisors to ensure effectiveness.

As an independent asset management company, we are structurally less exposed to conflicts of interest with investee companies, and no specific corporate group influences our stewardship activities. In fact, during the past year, no cases arose in which conflicts of interest posed an issue in our investment decisions or voting.

Principle 3

Institutional investors should appropriately monitor investee companies to fulfill their stewardship responsibilities with the aim of promoting the sustainable growth of the investee companies.

Our research centers on developing and testing investment hypotheses. These hypotheses involve predicting changes in a company’s financial and non-financial fundamentals, as well as the corresponding share price scenarios. In formulating them, we consider both how a company is affected by changes in society and the environment, and how it impacts stakeholders, including society and the environment. We also account for how our engagement activities may affect the company.

Over the past year, we conducted 682 company research activities. In addition to dialogues with management, IR, and sustainability officers, we also conducted site visits and discussions involving external experts to deepen our understanding of investee companies.

To assess how our investments affect society, we measure and manage the impacts generated by investee companies (Impact Management & Measurement: IMM), and incorporate this data into our corporate valuation process.

Recognizing the growing importance of non-financial information in equity investment, we also actively participated in seminars and events on sustainable and impact investing, such as the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative, to enhance our knowledge base.

Principle 4

Institutional investors should seek to share understanding with investee companies and work to solve problems through constructive, purposeful dialogue.

Through direct engagement by our investment professionals, we provide support so that investee companies’ initiatives generate virtuous cycles. When misconduct occurs or stakeholders are adversely affected, we encourage corrective action.

Where appropriate, we also collaborate with other stakeholders in dialogue with investee companies.

In the past year, we held 523 one-on-one meetings (included in the research figure noted above). Because our investment professionals also lead engagement, each meeting serves both research and engagement purposes.

Key topics included impact and disclosure issues, as well as ESG risks. We monitor outcomes by tracking metrics such as price-to-book ratio (PBR) and our proprietary sustainability scores. To verify the appropriateness of our dialogues, we also survey companies post-meeting. From July 2024 to June 2025, 96.5% of respondents answered “Yes” when asked if “important points were covered,” while 77.0% cited medium- to long-term strategy and 52.2% cited sustainability as important discussion areas. The survey response rate was 57.1%.

Additionally, we hosted collaborative engagement meetings with asset owners and peers in the investment and sustainability functions of other managers. Over the year, we held four such meetings, with 67 participants (excluding speakers) engaging in lively Q&A.

Principle 5

Institutional investors should have clear guidelines on the exercise of voting rights and disclosure of voting results, and should exercise voting rights in a manner that contributes to the sustainable growth of investee companies.

When exercising voting rights, we aim to contribute to building a sustainable society and environment by considering the interests of both shareholders and stakeholders, thereby serving our clients’ long-term interests.

Since our investments are made based on alignment with management’s direction, we generally respect management’s policies. However, we oppose or abstain from proposals that we believe go against shareholder and stakeholder interests, unless a clear explanation is provided.

We disclose our voting results annually on our website, including details of individual agenda items. For items we oppose, we also disclose the reasons.

Over the past year, our investment professionals exercised voting rights on all shareholder proposals of investee companies. Results are available here.

Principle 6

Institutional investors should regularly report to clients and beneficiaries on how they fulfill their stewardship responsibilities, including voting.

We report our engagement and voting activities through client reports and meetings, supplementing numerical data such as the number of dialogues with case studies that illustrate the details of our activities.

In the past year, we held 55 individual meetings with clients and prospective investors to report on our stewardship activities.

We also publish a Progress Report to share updates on our mission, and actively disseminate information through initiatives such as the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative and the Social Impact Management Initiative (SIMI). Moreover, we hosted a seminar titled “Advancing Stakeholder Dialogue and Implementing it into Corporate Strategy”, featuring speakers from the ILO, environmental NGOs, and corporate sustainability experts.

In addition, we use our website and social media channels to provide updates on our activities. Please also refer to these for further information.

Principle 7

To contribute to the sustainable growth of investee companies, institutional investors should have sufficient capability and resources, including deep understanding of investee companies and sustainability considerations relevant to their investment strategies.

To conduct engagement and voting appropriately, our Investment Management Department plays a central role, supported by both organizational and human resource development.

The most important element of our organizational setup is sharing a common investment philosophy across the firm. Building on this, we integrate investment, engagement, and voting into a consistent process, with ongoing improvements over time to strengthen our framework.

For talent development, we run in-house training on company research and dialogue methods, while actively leveraging external educational opportunities to enhance the skills of our professionals.

Our Board of Directors oversees these activities. The Investment Management Department conducts an annual self-assessment, reports to the Board, and the results are disclosed on our website.

Our investment professionals hold daily and weekly meetings to share philosophy and ideas. Company-wide compliance and sustainability training further enhances our collective capabilities.

We also hold regular meetings with five external advisors, receiving objective feedback—including at times rigorous criticism—that helps reinforce our discipline. One advisor, for instance, has offered academic insights into our investment process, noting that our approach of encouraging greater sustainability disclosure is academically validated.

As part of next-generation development, we accepted one student intern to strengthen our human resource pipeline.

We also actively participate in initiatives such as the Impact Consortium, the Impact-Driven Financing Initiative, and SIMI. By sharing insights gained from developing and applying our proprietary Impact-Integrated Value (IIV) framework, we contribute to deepening capital market discussions on impact integration. Feedback from participants is incorporated into improving our stewardship practices. Please see our Progress Report for further details.