Bridges Annual Report 2022/23
Our 2022/23 Annual Report looks at some of the highlights from what was another significant year for Bridges
Our 2022/23 Annual Report looks at some of the highlights from what was another significant year for Bridges:
- Invested over £200m and generated more than £140m of proceeds for investors
- Continued our focus on sustainable needs-driven real estate, with ten new investments across our three key sectors: healthcare, low-carbon logistics and living
- Completed three new platform deals from our Growth Funds, all focusing on different elements of our ‘Sustainable Planet’ theme
- Supported six new projects in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Kenya via a new outcomes-based initiative for low- and middle-income countries (launched in partnership with the UBS Optimus Foundation)
In what was clearly a difficult year for private markets, it was also encouraging to see that appetite for sustainable and impact investing appeared to buck the general trend. (About three times as much money was raised for ESG/ impact funds in 2022 than in 2019, according to McKinsey & Co.).
Nonetheless, it’s clear that we need to go much further, much faster. We’re now half-way towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ target date of 2030, and we continue to lag behind in so many areas. In recognition of this – and to mark Bridges’ 20th anniversary – we recorded a new series called 20/30 Visions, in which 20 global thought leaders from a range of disciplines shared their ideas with us about how to accelerate the transition. Please do take a look if you haven’t already.
In this year’s report, we highlight some examples of how our investments are supporting this transition, across the Bridges platform. And we explain how we’re evolving our impact valuation methodology, to help us better understand the relative impact of different investment opportunities and incentivise truly sustainable impact performance. As investors, we believe this will not only achieve better outcomes for people and the planet; it will also help us identify resilient, needs-driven sectors and business models that will continue to deliver attractive returns even in a turbulent market.