Zouk Capital awarded ESG Investor of the Year

Clean infrastructure and growth technology fund manager Zouk Capital is delighted to announce it has been awarded 'ESG Investor of the Year' at BusinessGreen's 2019 Leader Awards.

Over 500 executives, politician, investors, entrepreneurs and campaigners gathered in London on 26th June to celebrate the green economy. The awards were more competitive than ever with over 350 entries across 24 categories. In the ESG Investor of the Year category, Zouk were announced as winners, with the judges commenting, 'With ever more investors embracing ESG practices, Zouk Capital stood out with the judges thanks to its long-standing and fully embedded ESG strategy, which has served to drive major investments in some of Europe's most exciting clean technology projects and companies.' Highly commended in the category were Church Commissioners for England and Hermes Investment Management.

Zouk first started formalising its ESG practices in 2006 and has regularly improved upon and updated this knowledge on a continual basis. ESG is at the core of every Zouk investment, believing that incorporating views around sustainability into its investment process drives alpha in its investments. Zouk's approach is holistic and therefore able to fully capture a prospective investment's impact, sustainability and/or resource efficiency potential. Formal policies are in place to guide this process and assess ESG value creation. All investments are measured through Zouk's bespoke ‘Sustainable Impact Assessment Methodology' with findings and ESG assessment included as part of the investment committee paper, discussion, and decision.

Samer Salty, Managing Partner of Zouk Capital said, 'We are delighted that our commitment to ESG has been recognised. Combining a returns-driven strategy with a sustainability-driven strategy allows a focus on investments that generate target returns while driving ESG considerations. This is understood and appreciated by our investors and investments. We believe that a culture of sustainability must be pervasive through the whole company - it is part of Zouk's DNA. We believe a more sustainable approach to every part of life is becoming a deep-rooted cultural shift for companies, people and investors. Cultural change demonstrates that once we are doing ‘good', doing ‘well' is a lesson combining financial, economic and impact. This power of culture becomes even more effective when overlaid with better economics and the multiplier effect means it not only makes better sense environmentally, but also economically. We believe we are on the cusp of this cultural shift.'