‘Big Society Capital’ Fund Launched to Support Social Investment
As a leading provider of company secretarial services, London Registrars (http://www.london-registrars.co.uk/) is called upon to act as company secretary not only for incorporated commercial organisations, but also for a number of charities. A recent government initiative of interest to UK charities is the ‘Big Society Capital’ fund, which was launched in order to support social projects in the country.
This £600 million fund was launched by David Cameron earlier this year in a bid to tackle the United Kingdom’s “deepest social problems”. The capital for the ‘Big Society Capital’ fund came initially from unclaimed cash from bank accounts which have been dormant for over 15 years – around £400 million’s worth. A further £200 million was raised by the four largest UK high street banks Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and RBS.
In a speech announcing the launch of the ‘Big Society Capital’ fund, Cameron stated, “For years, the City has been associated with providing capital to help businesses to expand. Today, this is about supplying capital to help society expand. Just as finance from the City has been essential to help businesses grow and take on the world, so finance from the City is going to be essential to helping tackle our deepest social problems”.
The scheme, which has taken more than two years to establish and which is run by the former JP Morgan Global Head of Research Nick O’Donohoe, and chaired by the founder of Apax, Sir Ronald Cohen, will invest in organisations that provide affordable finance to social projects. The investment will be repaid by those projects by the income generated, with the idea being that the money will in turn be reinvested into further new projects, essentially generating “new cash”.
“Big Society Capital is going to encourage charities and social enterprises to prove their business models – and then copy them,” said Cameron. Speaking about the fund, Minister for civil society Nick Hurd commented, “Charities and social enterprises have been telling Government for at least 10 years that it’s very hard for them to access capital from traditional financial institutions”. Hurd believes that Big Society Capital would “play its part in correcting that market failure”. “Charities and foundations were sitting on £95 billion worth of assets currently managed very conservatively through traditional financial instruments,” he added. “If a tiny percentage of that capital could be persuaded to consider social investments as being compatible with their social mission we think we can move serious money into the social sector.”
London Registrars helps with the company formations of Community Interest Companies as well as acting as company secretary for a number of charities. To find out more about the full range of services offered by the company, go to the London Registrars website at http://www.london-registrars.co.uk/.
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