You are Renata Solís, portfolio manager of the Fondo Responsable Global at Meridiano Capital in Monterrey. At 6:40 on Monday 9 March 2026 the overnight risk pack shows the fund's ESG score below its contractual floor, and two other limits with almost no room left. Before you place a single order, you have to decide which limit you organise the week around.
The situation
Meridiano manages MXN 38,000 million, about US$2,100 million. Its flagship, the Fondo Responsable Global, is a US$900 million multi-asset portfolio run for the pension reserve of a Mexican industrial group and benchmarked to a 60/40 global equity-and-bond index: about 43% of the firm's assets and its anchor client.
In 2023 you negotiated two responsibility measures into the investment management agreement: a portfolio ESG score of at least 65 out of 100, and weighted carbon intensity below the benchmark's. Meridiano's board separately set an ex-ante tracking-error budget of 4.0% and a value-at-risk limit of 3.0% (one month, 95%). The agreement ranks none of them: all four must hold for the same portfolio on the same day.
Overnight, an index rebalance and two controversy downgrades moved the score from 66.4 to 62.8. The agreement allows ten business days to cure, until Friday 20 March; the client's investment committee meets on Monday the 23rd with the mandate review on the agenda. Carbon intensity sits 8% above the benchmark, tracking error at 3.70% and value at risk at 2.80%. For the year to date the fund is 65 basis points behind its benchmark, after fees.
Brent crude has risen 14% in eight sessions, and with it the fund's US$81 million of Latin-American energy shares, 9% of the portfolio; your energy analyst puts the odds of the move giving back a large part of itself this month at roughly even. Your risk lead has a rule of thumb from the last three rebalances: each point of score bought by selling has cost about a quarter of a point of tracking error. In January you told the client's committee, on a slide you wrote yourself, that responsibility and return were not in conflict.