What ESG means to us

We define ESG investing as being based on two fundamental investment principles: investing sustainably and investing responsibly.  We think of this in terms of what we do and how we do it.  Environmental, social and governance criteria provide a framework to explore the principles of sustainable and responsible investing.  Using this framework, we can establish best practice in each part of our business and set targets to monitor our progress against agreed objectives.

This investment approach is embodied by the following statement on our home page:

We believe that our investments should deliver not only for our investors but also create a positive impact for the communities in which we operate.

Below, we explore what we mean by this statement and explain how investing for more than just profit has been part of our journey since we commenced business in 1998.

Motives beyond profit

Like any commercial business, making profit for our investors and shareholders has always been a core part of what we do.  It’s what keeps investors coming back and provides us with capital to reinvest alongside those investors, as well as to invest in new sectors and ideas and reward our people.  Making money for investors and shareholders has never been our only aim, however.  Indeed, had that been our sole focus it is questionable whether our business would have been around for very long.

This is because for our unique media business model to be successful, to be that bridge between creativity (in the broadest sense) and finance, we needed to do so much more than just make money.  Making money was only possible if we were to be successful in educating investors, building collaboration and supporting government policy on the ‘creative industries’..

Accordingly, we developed a fully integrated independent business encompassing investment, corporate finance, consulting and securities expertise to meet the needs of a wide range of clients in the creative sector, whilst simultaneously deepening relationships within the higher education and independent research sectors in order to equip emerging talent with the skills required to succeed in the industry.  This gave rise to the development of several long-standing relationships focusing on creative enterprise, public policy and entrepreneurialism, including partnerships with Goldsmiths in the University of London (Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship), Nesta (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts), the British Council and the National Film and Television School (NFTS).

As Ingenious grew, so our support for other organisations in the creative sector increased too, including work with award-winning businesses such as Hat Trick Productions, as well as not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises like the Young Vic Theatre Company and Cockpit Arts.  With increasing profitability, we were also able to support a broad range of charities in the sector with sponsorship of the NFTS annual fund-raising gala, the Music Industry Trust Awards (the MITs) and music therapy charity Nordoff Robins, being the most prominent beneficiaries.

Looking back, we intuitively believed that this holistic model, combining commercial investment with a broader approach to stakeholder engagement, made good business sense.  Whilst it was never part of a fully mapped out theoretical masterplan, we did have a clear sense of wanting to do things differently.  Working in partnership with industry and emerging talent in a thoughtful, ‘ingenious’ way has been the approach that has sustained our business for more than two decades in every sector in which we have operated and is deeply embedded in our culture.

Social change and the movie business

Being able to bring important social messages to a global entertainment audience is a responsibility that comes with producing and financing films, which we did for two decades.  We backed a range of culturally significant movies over the years, including Avatar (the future of the environment), Selma (Martin Luther King’s campaign for race equality), Suffragette (women’s right to vote), Pride (LGBT+ rights), The Roads Not Taken (Alzheimer’s and dementia), Vera Drake and Call Jane (abortion rights) and Whina (Maori land rights), amongst others.

Many of our films have featured strong female protagonists, such as Military Wives (Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan) and Judy, starring the Oscar-winning Renee Zellweger as the eponymous singer (Garland).  Behind the camera, we actively supported the gender equality agenda in films like Suffragette, A United Kingdom, Selma and Their Finest, directed respectively by Sarah Gavron, Amma Asante, Ava DuVernay and Lone Scherfig.

As we became established as one of the leading investors in the creative industries, so our investors began to ask what we were going to do next. Believing that genuine sector expertise is the key to investment success, we began to look around for other sector opportunities.

Ingenious and the environment

Our macro-led investment approach resulted in us starting to think about how we could play a role in the energy sector against a background of mounting evidence of the adverse impact of climate change.  Just as the media sector had been radically disrupted by the digital shift, so the energy sector was also experiencing systemic upheaval with the growing realisation that to combat climate change the world needed to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels to cleaner and more renewable sources of energy. We concluded that our distinctive investment approach could equally be applied to the clean energy sector.

On an emotional level, this opportunity resonated with us just as much as the opportunity to tell great stories via our screen business interests.  Here was a comparable chance to invest in innovation and entrepreneurial talent, combined with a clear investment opportunity.  In a relatively short time this led us to develop, construct and operate a large portfolio of solar, wind and anaerobic digestion plants in the UK.  Subsequently, we developed a portfolio of venture capital investments in clean-tech companies, some of which are now at the cutting edge of supporting the transition from fossil fuels to low CO2 energy systems.

Ingenious, real estate and the housing sector

Having successfully identified and integrated a new sector focus into our investment strategy in the form of clean energy, we identified a further investment opportunity which was to help address the shortage of new housing being built in the UK.  This had been identified by successive UK governments as a national priority.  The investment thesis here was developed from a realisation that, following the financial crash of 2008, the banks had stopped providing liquidity to mid-market developers.  This was compounding the shortage of good quality new housing and we felt we could do something positive to remedy that.  Once again, we liked the social impact aspect of this investment strategy – the opportunity to help grow the national housing stock, both to buy and rent, in response to a widely recognised public need.

The implementation of our approach to housing investment was carefully calibrated.  For example, at the outset we decided to avoid high-end premium residential properties and to focus on the affordable end of construction for family homes and flats, where shortage of liquidity, market demand and public need were most pronounced.  We began by focusing on the market in the South-east, and this has now expanded to include developments throughout the UK.

Over time, our focus has broadened beyond quantity and quality of unit output to incorporate consideration of the sustainability of material inputs into these new homes.  We are proud to be focusing increasingly on low carbon schemes, evidenced by our membership of the Green Building Council and investment in the UK’s largest sustainable housing development in Leeds.

Investing sustainably and responsibly for the future

We hope that this introductory overview provides some helpful context on the evolution of our business and our approach to investing sustainably and responsibly.  We will continue to focus not only on the what, but also the how, to ensure we deliver for our investors and create a positive impact for the communities in which our businesses operate.

Each part of our business has established clear principles and metrics which support our company-wide approach to sustainability and responsibility in the broadest sense.  These are assessed and reviewed on an annual basis.

As a specialist investor, we carefully select our sectors for investment having regard both for the macro thesis and consistency with the wider ESG themes.  We currently specialise predominantly in real estate, although we also retain interests in media business and infrastructure.  For the avoidance of any doubt, we do not invest in sectors which we consider are unethical or inconsistent with the wider purposes of ESG thinking.