IOI Properties Group wins Best of the Best at The Edge ESG Awards 2026

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 2): IOI Properties Group Bhd (KL:IOIPG) won the Best of the Best award at The Edge Malaysia ESG Awards 2026 on Tuesday, recognising companies that have demonstrated consistent ESG performance over three consecutive years.

The award is presented to public-listed companies (PLCs) based on their respective ESG scores and the compound annual growth rate of common dividends declared over the past three years.

The past year has been difficult for businesses, with the war in Iran pushing up oil prices and continued uncertainty over the global trade war, said The Edge Media Group publisher and group CEO Datuk Ho Kay Tat.

Despite the challenging environment, Ho said the ESG agenda had continued to gain traction among businesses that increasingly viewed sustainability as part of their long-term strategy.

“The ESG agenda continues to be upheld by some businesses, who see it as a strategy to achieve resilience and stay competitive in the long term,” Ho said in his welcoming speech at the awards.

The event was organised by The Edge Malaysia in collaboration with Bursa Malaysia and FTSE Russell, with UOB Malaysia as its main partner. Morningstar was the awards’ knowledge partner for the funds category, while Deloitte was the auditor and Artelia sponsored the trophies.

The awards were held at the Four Seasons Hotel this year and attended by more than 350 guests.

This year’s awards saw the largest number of PLCs assessed, with 1,003 companies evaluated, up from 966 a year earlier, alongside broader coverage of the ACE Market. The weighted average ESG score of Main Market and ACE Market PLCs rose to 2.7 from 2.5 a year earlier, according to Bursa Malaysia.

To encourage capacity building among local fund houses, the awards introduced a new category this year to recognise the best feeder and non-feeder funds under the Best ESG Overall category.

Principal Malaysia’s Principal Global Sustainable Growth Fund won Best Feeder Fund, while RHB Asset Management’s RHB i-Sustainable Future Technology Fund won Best Non-Feeder Fund.

Guest of honour Datuk Seri Arthur Joseph Kurup, the Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability, said the improvement in ESG performance came as sustainability increasingly became a matter of capital preservation, risk management and competitiveness.

“ESG is no longer a peripheral compliance exercise or a public relations exercise. It is a core anchor of long-term capital preservation, risk management and also commercial competitiveness in a climate-conscious global economy,” Kurup said in his keynote address.

He said the government was also strengthening Malaysia’s climate policy framework, including through the National Carbon Market Policy launched in April and the finalisation of climate change legislation.

As Malaysia advances its carbon pricing mechanism, including a proposed carbon tax initially focused on emissions-intensive sectors, Kurup said the policy was intended to encourage green technology, improve efficiency and protect the competitiveness of Malaysian exporters as global markets introduce measures such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

However, he stressed that government policy alone would not be enough, with businesses and financial institutions needing to translate climate ambitions into actual changes in how they allocate capital, deploy technology and run their operations.

“Effective policy frameworks alone will not achieve a low-carbon economy. The private sector must help in order to translate ambition into action,” Kurup said.

He also warned that companies would face greater scrutiny over the credibility of their stainability claims as investors and trading partners became more discerning.

“Greenwashing is in fact a severe liability,” Kurup said, while calling for credible science-based targets, transparent disclosures and actionable decarbonisation roadmaps covering Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

Ho also linked responsible business practices to environmental outcomes, pointing to the recent haze as a reminder of the wider impact of economic activity.

“If more businesses are run more responsibly around the world, we will not have incidents like wildfires and the haze that has impacted us this past several weeks,” he said.

Other winners in the Best of the Best category were George Kent (M) Bhd (KL:GKENT), IOI Corporation Bhd (KL:IOICORP) and Westports Holdings Bhd (KL:WPRTS). A total of 37 awards were given to 31 companies across the PLCs and funds categories.

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