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	Dinner Sponsor



	Reception Sponsors




	Main Sponsors




	Contributing Sponsor



	Green Sponsor



ESRA Training Sponsors

Events

UNEP FI 2009 Global Roundtable

Our Sponsors

Conference Dinner Sponsor

Standard Chartered PLC, listed on both London and Hong Kong stock exchanges, ranks among the top 25 companies in the FTSE-100 by market capitalization. The London-headquartered Group has operated for over 150 years in some of the world's most dynamic markets, leading the way in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Its income and profits have more than doubled over the last five years primarily as a result of organic growth and supplemented by acquisitions.

Standard Chartered aspires to be the best international bank for its customers across its markets. The Group derives more than 90 per cent of its operating income and profits from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, generated from its Wholesale and Consumer Banking businesses. The Group has over 1600 branches and outlets located in over 70 countries. The extraordinary growth of its markets and businesses creates exciting and challenging international career opportunities.

Leading by example to be the right partner for its stakeholders, the Group is committed to building a sustainable business over the long term and is trusted worldwide for upholding high standards of corporate governance, social responsibility, environmental protection and employee diversity. It employs more than 70,000 people, nearly half of whom are women. The Group's employees are of 125 nationalities, of which about 70 are represented in the senior management.

Reception Sponsors

The Absa Group Limited (Absa) is one of South Africa's largest financial services groups offering a complete range of banking, assurance and wealth management products and services. Absa's business is conducted primarily in South Africa. In addition to this, the Group has equity holdings in banks in Mozambique and Tanzania.

At 30 June 2009, the Absa Group had 718.2 million shares in issue and a market capitalisation of R79 billion. The Group had assets of R754.3 billion, 11.3 million customers, 9,211 automated teller machines and 36,920 permanent employees.

Absa is a subsidiary of Barclays Bank PLC, which holds a stake of 55.4% in the Group.

Absa and sustainability

Absa believes that the most significant contribution we can make to society is by operating a commercially successful business in a responsible way. In achieving this, we must ensure value creation for both stakeholders and the environment. This necessitates that Absa accurately identifies and manages economic, social and environmental issues across the Group, and contributes to the wellbeing of society.

Absa is firmly committed to advancing the principles and practice of sustainable development and take our role as a leading and concerned corporate citizen seriously. We have developed six core themes to facilitate sustainable value creation for all stakeholders. The themes are:

Economic value creation - growing the business and delivering stakeholder value.
Customer centricity - increasing the understanding of Absa's products and services; ensuring optimal access to financial products and services, and enhancing service and advocacy levels.
Engaging and caring financial services company - adding value to the communities the Group operates in; creating a positive, supportive, healthy and diverse working environment; minimising the Group's impact on the environment; maintaining fair and equitable relationships with suppliers, and aligning business to national priorities.
Transformation and BEE - ensuring that the Group's shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers represent the demographics of South Africa.
Corporate reputation - remaining the leading financial services brand; being recognised as an ethical company and as a company that maintains high standards of corporate governance.
Stakeholder engagement - creating an in-depth understanding of all the Group's stakeholders and identifying material stakeholder issues.

Barclays PLC is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services with an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 50 countries and employs approximately 145,000 people. Barclays moves, lends, invests and protects money for more than 49 million customers and clients worldwide.

Barclays and sustainability

At Barclays we recognise that our sustainability values have increased importance in the current financial climate. We are focused on: supporting our existing customers; being a bank that welcomes all potential customers; being an equal opportunity employer; our commitment to addressing climate change; and ensuring we behave at all times as a responsible global citizen.

Doing this effectively helps us to reduce our risk and positions us well to capture commercial opportunities arising from the global transition towards a more sustainable future.

Main Sponsors

IFC's Purpose is to create opportunity for people to escape poverty and improve their lives by

Promoting open and competitive markets in developing countries
Supporting companies and other private sector partners where there is a gap
Helping generate productive jobs and deliver essential services to the underserved
Catalyzing and mobilizing other sources of finance for private enterprise development

To achieve its Purpose, IFC offers development-impact solutions through firm-level interventions (direct investments, advisory services, and the IFC Asset Management Company); standard-setting; and business enabling environment work.

IFC fosters sustainable economic growth in developing countries by financing private sector investment, mobilizing capital in the international financial markets, and providing advisory services to businesses and governments.

IFC helps companies and financial institutions in emerging markets create jobs, generate tax revenues, improve corporate governance and environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities. The goal is to improve lives, especially for the people who most need the benefits of growth.

As South Africa's 'green bank' the Nedbank Group recognises that effective environmental management is a non-negotiable element of the organisation's sustainable corporate performance.

The group has a dedicated Transformation and Sustainability Board Sub-Committee, which is responsible for monitoring and informing environmental and social investment policies and ensuring that these are integrated into all the operations of the bank. It's an aspiration that is underpinned by the many green policies and organisations to which Nedbank subscribes. The group's Environmental Policy is closely aligned with the South African government's environmental protection and climate change mitigation strategies. Nedbank is a signatory to the National Energy Efficiency Accord, and was the first South African bank to subscribe to the Equator Principles, ensuring that the projects financed by the bank are socially responsible and environmentally sound.

From its 19-year relationship and conservation partnership with WWF-SA, and its sponsorship of the South African Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Leadership Report, to its commitment to saving Africa's rainforests through its involvement in the Prince's Rainforest Project, and the work of its dedicated Carbon Finance Team in reducing the Green House Gas emissions of the group and its clients, Nedbank is living out its Deep Green aspiration of being highly involved in the environment.

Nedbank is actively involved in the UNEP FI and participates in the Climate Change, Biodiversity and Water and Finance Workstreams.

Contributing Sponsor

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) has a sustainability policy that guides its planning. In every aspect of its business, BTMU ensures that environmental and social sustainability are key objectives. They are integrated into its choice of suppliers and business partners, the products and services it offers its members and the companies to which it loans money.

BTMU made achieving ISO certification a company target, because the ISO standards provide an internationally recognized yardstick to measure our success in improving quality.

As a benchmark for improving customer satisfaction, we aimed to receive certification for the ISO 9001 standard for Service Quality, and in August 2005, we acquired ISO 9001 certification for our Business processes regarding the design, development of products and services and making proposals based on customer requirements. Regarding ISO 14001, we acquired it in April 2005. And in June 2006 we acquired ISO27001 certification for its two main systems.

BTMU also offers its employees a range of incentives to encourage them to adopt environmentally sustainable practices in their everyday lives. Recently MUFG and group companies decided to participate in voluntary CO2 Emission Reduction Program, called “Team Minus 6” implemented by Ministry of Environment Japan.

Green Sponsor

The Pick n Pay Group is one of Africa’s largest and most consistently successful retailers of food, clothing and general merchandise.

Sustainability businesses have an important role to play in building sustainable communities. This responsibility should be embraced: not only is it a philanthropic way to thinking, but it is also an act of enlightened self-interest. In our case, the more economic freedom pervades South African society, the more scope there will be for growth in the retail market. It is no surprise that our view is the same as it was at inception: big business must work together towards securing the economic security and social well being of generations to come.

ESRA Training Sponsors

DEG, member of KfW Bankengruppe, is one of the largest European development finance institutions for long-term project and company financing. For more than 45 years, DEG has been financing and structuring the investments of private companies in developing and transition countries.

DEG invests in profitable projects that contribute to sustainable development in all sectors of the economy, from agriculture to infrastructure and manufacturing to services. We also focus on investments in the financial sector in order to facilitate reliable access to capital locally. To date, we have worked together with more than 1,500 companies. We have committed financings of around 4.7 billion euros over the past five years alone.

Our aim is to establish and expand private enterprise structures in developing and transition countries, and thus create the basis for sustainable economic growth and a lasting improvement in the living conditions of the local population.

FirstRand is one of the largest financial institutions in South Africa and represents a very different proposition to its peers in that it is the only fully integrated financial services group in South Africa. It is also the only one of the big-four South African retail, commercial and investment banking groups that is “owner-managed”. The FirstRand Group employs approximately 44 000 people and has a retail franchise footprint of 712 branches and 4800 ATM's in Southern Africa. The divisions and partners in FirstRand include First National Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, WesBank, eBucks, FNB Africa, Momentum and Outsurance.

The FirstRand Group has a ‘green’ philosophy, and they are part of the Global 500 in terms of green initiatives and minimizing their carbon footprint. The Group is proactively confronting rising energy costs, and they have determined energy efficiency will be their primary measurable action.

FirstRand is continually exploring ways to address environmental concerns with all its stakeholders and strives towards carbon neutrality. South Africa is recognized as being especially prone to the negative consequences of climate change. As a developing country, requirements for economic and social development need to be balanced with environmental management and climate change.

“Socially responsible investment and governance relies heavily on transparent rules that impose obligations on financiers to publicly disclose investment and lending policies and to adhere to general corporate sustainability standards,” says FirstRand CE elect Sizwe Nxasana. “At first glance, transparent regulation may resemble a preference for soft-touch, business-as-usual arrangements, but, in fact, it encourages investment institutions to introduce socially responsible investment issues into their investment and lending practices. Our adoption of the Equator Principles demonstrates our long-term commitment to socially responsible investment.”