Funding and Investment
Our investments ensure that we can keep working to improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in our territories for decades to come. As the corporate venture capital (CVC) organization of Arian Holdings, we are actively investing in startups around the world with our stated mission of “We help our business innovate and grow by investing in startups for future disruptive businesses.” We, the “Arian” Group, are at the heart of this organization, promoting CVC activities.
Purpose
The purpose of our investments is to finance all our work, not only our partners well studied projects and social investments, but also our own projects. Our investment policy is intended to provide long-term stability and liquidity to finance our work while maintaining the real value of the family fund.
How we invest
Our portfolio is diversified across a broad range of asset classes, geographies, investment managers and investment strategies. All of our portfolio is invested via pooled funds, which means that we invest in a large range of companies that change from day to day.
Our investment advisors, manage the day to day running of our investment portfolio, under instruction of our Investment Committee, working with our staff.
Transparency
We are aware that our mission or our credibility may be undermined if we invest in businesses whose activities undermine our values and impact objectives. Given this, transparency is very important in identifying where conflicts may arise. We will seek to avoid narrowly focused strategies which may have meaningful exposure to such controversial areas. And we are committed to involvement in strategies with enhanced environmental or social impact.
Alignment with our funding
We are willing to engage with businesses and asset managers to align outcomes with our grant-making priorities but will avoid excess complexity or devaluing its impact by untargeted, unrealistic or numerous initiatives.
Strategic oversight
Our core expertise is in funding. Therefore, we have chosen to seek external advice in the areas of endowment strategy, asset allocation, manager selection and due diligence. However, we retain final decision rights – it remains essential that we have both Trustee and Executive investment expertise in order to provide effective strategic oversight of the adviser(s). It is also important for all Trustees to have a broad understanding of the investment strategy and its implications.
2021 Investment summary
The market value of the investments at the end of 2021 was 482 million USD. The portfolio’s total return of 31.1% in 2021 compared to the long-term investment objective (RPI+4%) which was up 11.8% during the year. Looking back over one-year, three-year, five-year and since-inception, the performance of the portfolio against our long-term investment objectives is as follows:
