Sustainability

Our Principles

Our Group invests in many diverse businesses and each one adopts an approach to sustainability which fits with its respective profile. As a responsible investor, the Group aims to positively influence each company’s sustainability credentials by engaging with investee companies and monitoring their progress.

We invest to generate social and environmental benefits in addition to financial returns.

For over 25 years the Environmental, Social and Governance model embodied by the following Jean Boulle Group Business Principles:

• We explore – We make discoveries by being curious and intelligent.
• We learn – We progress by maintaining the energy and strength needed to inspire, cooperate and deliver change at all times.
• We share – Sustainability relates as much to building financial resilience as it does to social return.
• We respect – Responsible behaviour requires respect for all peoples, all nature and all capabilities.
• We remember – Our past successes and network help us to find and act upon new ideas and to make them succeed.
• We cooperate – Partnerships with government, community, customers and colleagues are essential to success.
• We commit – We invest on our own and with other shareholders who share our conviction to deliver long term gain by managing risk and securing licenses to operate and prosper.
• We care – Our businesses fundamentally impact people which makes us responsible and mindful of our duty of care.
• We support all stakeholders – We invest time and money to enable others to act and to develop ideas which have the potential to improve our combined future.
• We persist – In all that we do we are tenacious, thoughtful and patient
• We conserve – Our actions impact nature’s fragile environment and its protection requires money, skill, patience and commitment.

Film Captures Oil Spill Reptile Rescue Mission 2 Years On

Environment

Working with the scientific community, leading environmental agencies and government the Jean Boulle Group has helped to rebuild the population of several endemic species, supported conservation and actively undertaken scientific research with the academic community.

Social

A range of short and long-term challenges drive the social factors which can affect any company’s financial performance. These challenges relate to issues including labour, supply chain, safety, geopolitical conflict, consumer and demographic change.

Our attention to these issues reflects our values in investing and aims to deliver more reliable and increased returns over time. The Group aims to continually develop its monitoring of the many social factors relating to its investee companies on a case-by-case basis.

We have a track record of initiating investment in countries which mainstream capital provision often excludes. For example:

The Group was a first mover in Sierra Leone following the devastating civil war which led to 50,000 deaths and over two million people being displaced.

Labrador, on Canada’s East Coast, had 40% unemployment and a mounting crisis in the fishing industry at the time that the Group decided to invest in mineral exploration.

South western Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world and two of our companies have invested in the country in order to generate both financial and social return.

Governance

The Group’s governance credentials are fundamental to our ability to prosper, attract capital and build partnerships. Our listed investments report according to the standard corporate governance guidelines of the relevant stock exchanges. Our private investee companies need to demonstrate effective governance in order to partner with multi-national companies, governments and state pension funds. For example:

Greenland Anorthosite Mining has attracted co-investment from the governments of Greenland and Denmark who recognise the benefits which responsible mining can bring to the country’s much needed development.

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, BirdLife International, National Parks and Conservation Service of Mauritius, and Forestry Service worked closely with the Jean Boulle Group on the rescue of three species of rare reptiles facing extinction, following the Wakashio oil spill in Mauritius.

Abbott Laboratories acquired Tendyne™ from Boulle Medtech for over US$250 million after the technology was proven and thereafter it received CE Mark approval from the European Union.

The results of a clinical trial by the group’s Trained Therapeutix Discovery Inc. published in Cell were a collaboration between the University of Athens Medical School, Radboud University Medical Center and the Life & Medical Sciences Institute, University of Bonn.