AS SHANGHAI shook world stock markets this week, wobbling those feeble new private sector pensions geared to share prices rather than final salaries, I wondered if a shrewd investment might be sitting alongside the checkout at Marks and Spencer. There's where you find a brochure for M&S's new Ethical Fund. There's a whiff of Mother Theresa about the advertising campaign. "Nobody can guarantee your investments will always do well," says the blurb, "but we can assure you they'll always do good". The Fund won't invest in any company deriving more than 10% of turnover from these activities -armaments, gambling, fur trade, tobacco, pornography - or any others with a poor environmental record. In theory, if Sainsbury's or another retailer sold millions of Lottery tickets one week, it could temporarily fall outside the tight moral criteria - by making too much from gambling. The M&S Ethical Fund will actually be operated by M&S Money, now owned by HSBC, and run on a profit-sharing basis with M&S. It will be managed by Sinopia Asset Management, part of HSBC, and fund manager Jupiter Asset Management, which has a well-regarded Socially Responsible Investment Team. However, if successful investing is partly a matter of catching the right bandwagon at the right moment, M&S's Ethical Fund - requiring a minimum lump sum of only £100 or minimum monthly investments from just £25 - might merit close attention. Revived M&S is again one of the sharpest retailers in a cutthroat High Street, while those who insist we live by ethical principles are slowly taking over the world. Who would have guessed until this week, for instance, that the first thing Prince Charles might banish from his kingdom if he ascends the Throne is Big Macs? M&S's Fund also reflects current investor sentiment. Says Jason Hollands, at fund manager F&C Investments: "There is no doubt the public have become more concerned about environmental and ethical issues in terms of the goods they buy and food they eat. "They are also concerned about where their money is invested when they hand it over to an asset manager. The ethical investment sector has grown rapidly in recent years in terms of size of assets and number of products." Friends Provident, which pioneered ethical investing, has more than £3bn in its Stewardship range, some invested in ethical pensions. Aegon Ethical, another high flyer in the sector, is up 90% in value in five years. There's a feeling, however, that "green" issues, like climate change, have only really hit the jackpot, from investors' viewpoint, in the past year or so. That's possibly why Co-op Insurance Services can boast its Sustainable Leaders Trust has come top of 324 unit trusts in the UK all companies sector with a total return of 29.3% in the year to January 31 - more than double the 13.2 rise recorded by UK FTSE All-Share. | 
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