7 December 2021: Members of our FIC community, subscribers to The European Family Investment Company Report – FIC owners and senior executives – plus selected invited guests and experts, including heads of family business associations, from across 11 countries met online for the 7th EFIC Virtual Conversation.
Topic: Impact Investing
Discussion was led by our guest speaker, the 5th generation owner of a multi-billion Euro asset European FIC with a long-standing, multi-strategy approach to Impact Investing.
Setting the scene
Before attendees engaged in discussing the questions we posed them, Professor Heinrich Liechtenstein from IESE Business School outlined Impact Investing definitions, John Learmonth from Deanbridge International presented some initial data from The European Family Investment Company Report: Second Edition and the guest speaker introduced their FIC and how they make Impact Investments.
Questions debated by attendees
First: ‘What are the one or two challenges/issues which you care about which could or do give your impact investing focus?’
Second: ‘How can or how do you leverage the resources of your FIC or family enterprise to solve your challenges/issues and to make them into an impact investment strategy?’
Third: ‘Have you or are you willing to partner with others and to experiment to deliver your impact investment strategy?’
Takeaways
From our guest speaker’s comments, and the experiences and ‘war stories’ shared by the other attendees while discussing these questions, we have condensed and distributed over 30 practical Takeaways distilled from their insights. If we were to pick just four, they would be:
- ‘If you care about something together you can make shit happen, it’s as easy as that.’
- Impact Investing can unite generations and people from different backgrounds.
- The vital role of visible, engaged, family leadership, both internally and externally.
- Great opportunity for families to work together to share, learn and scale Impact Investments.
After the ‘formal’ Virtual Conversation had closed we invited attendees to join the guest speaker, our team and fellow attendees for a Virtual Coffee in the Cyber Foyer, during which we had a very open and wide-ranging discussion of Impact Investment issues and opportunities.
NOTE: to enquire how to receive the full text of the Takeaways from this EFIC Virtual Conversation or how to join our community of family investment companies please email: info @ deanbridgeinternational.com