Coller Capital, founded in 1990, is a global private equity firm and a recognised leader in private equity’s secondary market. Coller Capital believes that farm animal welfare has historically had too low a profile within the investment management industry. The firm recognises the importance of this issue and incorporates farm animal welfare in its own Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies.
The risks connected with farm animal welfare must be managed if we want healthy food on our plates and healthy returns from our portfolios – as recent food scares, scandals and tightening EU regulation have all underlined. The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare will help investors understand which food companies are taking farm animal welfare seriously. Coller Capital is delighted to encourage greater industry engagement with this issue through its support of the BBFAW.
The BBFAW is the leading global measure of farm animal welfare management and reporting in food companies. Its annual benchmark is now recognised as the key assessment of how global food companies manage farm animal welfare, and BBFAW’s work has directly contributed to many companies strengthening their management and reporting of farm animal welfare. Since its inception in 2012, the BBFAW has played a catalytic role in encouraging institutional investors to pay greater attention to farm animal welfare issues in their investment processes and in their engagement with the companies in which they are invested.
Nicky Amos, Programme Director of the BBFAW, comments: “We are delighted to welcome Coller Capital as a Partner. We value their endorsement of the programme and their investment will help to secure long-term commitment to the BBFAW’s aims of providing investors with an independent, impartial and reliable assessment of individual company efforts to adopt higher welfare standards and practices”.
As a Partner of the BBFAW, Coller Capital operates in a funding capacity, and contributes to the strategic direction of the programme via the BBFAW Steering Committee alongside the BBFAW’s founding partners, Compassion in World Farming and World Animal Protection. Coller Capital is also represented on the BBFAW Technical Working Group, which oversees the development of the annual benchmark.
The third Benchmark of 80 leading food companies will be published on 12th February 2015.